Growing curation of regulatory assault on third-party lead generation

Roll up of current actions and key commentary

Bill Rice
February 24, 2023

Well, there is definitely a concerted effort to curtail third-party lead generation.

I’m still combing through the documents. However, a cursory glance confirms that the FCC, FTC, and CFPB carefully categorize every standard practice in third-party performance/digital marketing as prohibited.

Photo by Jaime Spaniol on Unsplash

Here are some key vectors that federal regulators are using in opinions and request for commentary that will make it very difficult for third-party lead generation companies to generate and sell leads to businesses.

Limit prior express consent to receive a call or text to one caller at a time. No more sending leads and transferring consent to multiple lead buyers.
No “pay-to-play” or preferential presentation of service providers based on payments to the marketing platform. No more sponsored or featured listings in click tables. No more preferential lead distribution based on lead pricing. No more optimizing monetization.

I’ll continue to monitor and report on these actions as they unfold, but until then, here is a stack of watching and reading material for your weekend.

Sources & Further Reading:

FCC Actions

CFPB Actions

FCC Actions