We built the network we wanted to buy from
Pick Calls started in 2017 as a two-person media shop selling calls into three insurance agencies. Every part of the platform since exists because something upstream of it kept breaking.
Most of this platform is scar tissue
We were buyers before we were a network, which is the only reason any of the following got built.
In 2017 we were buying media and selling calls into three auto insurance agencies in Colorado. The economics worked. The operations did not. We spent more time arguing about which calls counted than we did buying media.
So we wrote the rules down. Duration, geography, qualification — published to every publisher before they could run the offer. Disputes fell by an order of magnitude almost immediately, which told us the problem had never been bad actors. It was ambiguity.
In 2019 our third-party routing provider went down for four hours during Medicare open enrolment. We rebuilt routing in-house that winter. In 2021 we moved consent capture and DNC scrubbing into the routing layer, because policies that live in a document get skipped under pressure and policies in a code path cannot be.
Today the network moves about 1.4 million calls a month across eighteen sub-verticals, and has paid out $96 million to publishers. The operating principle has not changed since the first month: publish the rules, show the evidence, and let the call record settle disagreements.
Where the network stands
Four commitments we are willing to be held to
Transparency is the product
A marketplace only works if both sides trust the numbers. We publish the rules, show the evidence, and let the call record settle disagreements.
Quality compounds, volume does not
It is easy to move more calls and harder to move better ones. We optimise the network for billable rate, because that is what survives a budget review.
Compliance is an engineering problem
Policies nobody enforces are decoration. Consent capture, scrubbing, and state exclusions live in the routing layer where they cannot be skipped.
Partners, not accounts
Publishers and advertisers both get a named human. Scaled support that nobody can reach is the reason most networks feel adversarial.
Nine years, in the order it happened
Founded in Denver
Started as a two-person media buying shop selling calls into three insurance agencies.
Routing platform built in-house
Replaced third-party routing with our own stack after one too many outages during open enrolment.
Compliance layer shipped
Consent capture and DNC scrubbing moved into routing, ahead of the wave of enforcement that followed.
Crossed 1M monthly calls
Expanded from four verticals to eighteen, with legal and solar becoming the fastest-growing categories.
$96M paid to publishers
Cumulative publisher payouts passed $96 million across a network of 2,800 active partners.
Talk to someone who knows the numbers
Every partner gets a named human, not a ticket queue. Tell us what you are trying to do and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right fit.