Every city priced on its own

There is no national lead market — there are eight, and they do not resemble each other. A city's chairs cannot move, so each one has to fill its own chairs out of its own flow at its own price. Measured 2026-06, 2026-07, 2026-08; chairs and bookings are the May-Aug settled baseline.

Cheapest city

New York

$130 a booking at $9.48 a lead

Dearest city

Nashville

$297 a booking — 2.3× New York

Fill every city on quality leads

$509,721

vs $617,134 spent now for the same bookings

Saving

$107,413

$1,288,959 a year, same chairs filled

Cost per booking

$201

against $285 today

New York is the cheapest place we buy a booking anywhere — $130 against Nashville's $297. Same product, same bar, 2.3 times the price. A national average of $201 describes no city we actually operate in, and every decision taken off it over-buys the expensive half of the network and under-buys the cheap half.

Can each city fill its own chairs?

Leads needed is the city's own monthly bookings divided by its own qualifying booking rate. Supply is what its qualifying segments actually delivered per month over the window. The gap is the difference — and read it carefully: it is what we are not currently buying, which is not the same as what the supplier cannot deliver. The gap is a purchasing fact; a shortage is a supply fact, and only the supplier can tell you which cities have one.

City	Chairs / mo	Bookings / mo	Qual. booking rate	Qual. cost / lead	Cost / booking	Leads needed	Qual. supply	Gap	Cost to fill	Cost / booking today
New York	553	356	7.28%	$9.48	$130	4,888	2,265	-2,622	$46,321	$201
Orlando	502	386	6.12%	$8.70	$142	6,303	1,274	-5,029	$54,834	$241
Dallas	502	329	8.11%	$13.38	$165	4,059	1,953	-2,105	$54,308	$239
Chicago	489	314	6.60%	$13.61	$206	4,760	2,355	-2,405	$64,761	$327
Florida	420	328	6.19%	$12.87	$208	5,300	5,122	-178	$68,227	$269
Houston	458	293	6.09%	$14.37	$236	4,811	1,845	-2,967	$69,127	$342
Boston	399	290	7.51%	$20.51	$273	3,861	3,111	-750	$79,188	$318
Nashville	443	246	7.57%	$22.45	$297	3,250	2,224	-1,026	$72,955	$368
ALL EIGHT	3,766	2,542			$201	37,232	20,149	-17,083	$509,721	$285

Filling every city's chairs on quality leads only would cost $509,721 a month against the $617,134 we spend now for the same 2,542 bookings — $107,413 a month, $1,288,959 a year. It needs 37,232 qualifying leads a month against the 20,149 arriving now, so the question is which cities can actually scale — and the cheapest ones are the ones worth asking about first.

Kids and adults are different businesses in each city too

This is where grouping does the most damage. Houston kids cost $157 a booking while Houston adults cost $437 — inside one city, off one budget line.

City	Kids / mo	Kids rate	Kids $/lead	Kids $/booking	Adults / mo	Adult rate	Adult $/lead	Adult $/booking
New York	1,697	6.97%	$10.27	$147	569	8.21%	$7.10	$86
Orlando	0	—	—	—	1,274	6.12%	$8.70	$142
Dallas	959	8.28%	$14.45	$175	995	7.94%	$12.34	$155
Chicago	1,228	6.63%	$15.75	$238	1,127	6.57%	$11.27	$172
Florida	3,618	6.14%	$11.22	$183	1,504	6.32%	$16.86	$267
Houston	1,287	6.27%	$9.84	$157	558	5.68%	$24.80	$437
Boston	1,234	8.34%	$22.02	$264	1,876	6.96%	$19.52	$280
Nashville	879	8.57%	$28.61	$334	1,345	6.91%	$18.42	$266

Houston adults at $437 a booking should probably not be bought at all while Houston kids at $157 are among the best value in the network. Atlanta is absent because it opened on 11 Sep 2026, after this window closes — that is no data, not no supply.

2,500 kids + 5,000 adults, at today's prices

A fixed order of 7,500 leads — kids, plus only the adult segments booking at 5.5% or better. Booking rates and lead costs measured on 2026-06, 2026-07, 2026-08 (127,470 fresh leads, recycled excluded). Every revenue figure is contracted unless the column says banked.

Bookings

494

6.59% of 7,500 — today's blend gives 382

Arrivals

321

after show rate (kids 70.4%, adult 62.1%)

Contracted

$583,177

$77.76 per lead

Banked @ 63%

$367,402

$48.99 per lead

Ad cost

$104,066

$13.88 per lead

Banked less ad cost

$263,336

3.53× back on every ad dollar

Chairs needed

623

at today's 79.3% fill

Biggest bite of any segment

47%

of what that segment supplies — price should hold

This order is well inside what we already buy, so today's prices are the right ones to model on. The whole 7,500 is 35% of the 21,470 qualifying leads a month we get now, and the heaviest single segment is taken at 47% of its own supply. Nothing here needs a supplier to find us volume they are not already finding — which is exactly why the price should not move. See the Price tab for how far it could move before this stops working.

The same 7,500 leads, bought this way instead of today's way, produce 112 more bookings (+29%), $127,548 more contracted and $80,355 more banked — for $4,871 LESS ad spend. Cost per booking falls from $285 to $211, cost per arrival from $437 to $324.

How the 7,500 leads break down

Split in proportion to what each kept segment actually supplies today. Every rate is that segment's own measured rate.

Segment	Leads bought	Booking rate	Bookings	Arrivals	Contracted	Ad cost	Contracted / lead	Share of its supply
Kids Meta/Insta (KIDSX) KIDS	2,500	6.97%	174	123	$244,182	$35,822	$97.67	23%
Alan 3CX	1,342	6.66%	89	56	$94,778	$21,169	$70.64	47%
Adult Insta (1FX)	2,532	6.61%	167	104	$177,354	$28,195	$70.04	47%
Adult Snapchat	1,126	5.60%	63	39	$66,863	$18,881	$59.38	47%
TOTAL	7,500	6.59%	494	321	$583,177	$104,066	$77.76	35%

The conservative version — adults pinned at 5.5%

Three of the four kept segments measure above 5.5%. If you meant “assume the adults convert at 5.5%” rather than “buy the adults that already do”, this is the answer: 449 bookings, $535,695 contracted, $337,488 banked. Kids stay at their own 6.97% because kids is a segment, not an assumption.

Segment	Leads bought	Booking rate	Bookings	Arrivals	Contracted	Ad cost	Contracted / lead	Share of its supply
Kids Meta/Insta (KIDSX) KIDS	2,500	6.97%	174	123	$244,182	$35,822	$97.67	23%
Alan 3CX	1,342	5.50%	74	46	$78,229	$21,169	$58.30	47%
Adult Insta (1FX)	2,532	5.50%	139	86	$147,632	$28,195	$58.30	47%
Adult Snapchat	1,126	5.50%	62	38	$65,652	$18,881	$58.30	47%
TOTAL	7,500	5.99%	449	293	$535,695	$104,066	$71.43	35%

Where the order should actually be placed

The same 2,500 kids and 5,000 adults, bought two ways. Spread gives every city its pro-rata share, which is roughly today's shape. Cheapest first fills from the lowest cost per booking down until the order is full.

City	Spread: kids	Spread: adults	Spread: cost	Cheapest: kids	Cheapest: adults	Cheapest: cost	Difference
New York	389	307	$6,180	1,697	569	$21,469	+$15,289
Orlando	0	689	$5,991	—	1,274	$11,080	+$5,090
Dallas	220	538	$9,817	—	995	$12,279	+$2,462
Chicago	282	609	$11,301	—	1,127	$12,700	+$1,398
Florida	830	813	$23,016	—	—	—	$-23,016
Houston	295	302	$10,386	803	—	$7,908	$-2,478
Boston	283	1,014	$26,036	—	—	—	$-26,036
Nashville	202	727	$19,164	—	1,036	$19,083	$-81
TOTAL	2,500	5,000	$111,892	2,500	5,000	$84,518	$-27,374

Same order, same 518 bookings, $27,374 a month cheaper — $328,484 a year — purely by choosing which cities it is placed in. Cost per booking $218 → $163. That gap is the entire argument for pricing cities separately.

But do not run the cheapest-first column as a plan. It empties the cities it skips, and their chairs are physical, staffed and already paid for — a booking not made in Nashville is not saved, it is lost. It also assumes we can take 100% of the cheap cities' current flow, which is the exact volume-versus-price risk that started this. Read it as a price signal, not a purchase order: it says buy more where a booking costs $130 and less where it costs $297, inside what each city's chairs can absorb.

Every segment, measured

Booking rate is bookings ÷ fresh leads, joined on name + marketing code (the only key that works). Cost per lead comes from the supplier invoices via lead_costs.json, never a flat CPL. Recycled codes are out of the denominator entirely; their bookings fold into the parent code.

Kept — at or above 5.5%

Segment	Supplier	Kids / adult	Leads (3 mo)	Leads / month	Bookings	Booking rate	Cost / lead	Cost / booking
Kids Meta/Insta (KIDSX)	Blue Rooms	KIDS	32,703	10,901	2,280	6.97%	$14.33	$206
Alan 3CX	Alan	adult	8,509	2,836	567	6.66%	$15.78	$237
Adult Insta (1FX)	Blue Rooms	adult	16,058	5,353	1,061	6.61%	$11.13	$169
Adult Snapchat	Blue Rooms	adult	7,141	2,380	400	5.60%	$16.77	$299
TOTAL KEPT			64,411	21,470	4,308	6.69%	$13.99	$209

Dropped — below 5.5%

Segment	Supplier	Kids / adult	Leads (3 mo)	Leads / month	Bookings	Booking rate	Cost / lead	Cost / booking
Lead Pronto	Lead Pronto	adult	10,830	3,610	586	5.41%	$18.81	$348
Organic	Organic	adult	1,138	379	42	3.69%	$14.53	$394
Alan Facebook	Alan	adult	8,133	2,711	298	3.66%	$11.07	$302
Alan / other	Alan	adult	17,680	5,893	632	3.57%	$16.00	$448
Alan Instagram	Alan	adult	4,299	1,433	125	2.91%	$18.28	$629
Adult Google PMax (GX)	Blue Rooms	adult	9,635	3,212	238	2.47%	$12.04	$487
Kids Google PMax (KX)	Blue Rooms	KIDS	11,091	3,697	258	2.33%	$14.32	$615
Alan 4AB	Alan	adult	64	21	1	1.56%	$14.53	$930
Organic / A1	Organic	adult	189	63	1	0.53%	$14.53	$2,746
TOTAL DROPPED			63,059	21,020	2,181	3.46%	$15.07	$436

Two of these deserve a second look before anything is signed off. Lead Pronto misses the bar by 0.09 points (5.41%) — that is a rounding decision, not a verdict, and it carries 3,610 leads a month. Kids Google PMax (KX) is a KIDS segment that books at 2.33%, so “only kids leads” cannot mean all kids — KIDSX and KX are different products wearing the same word.

The price question

The worry is right in general — the last lead bought is always worse than the average one, and Blue Rooms kids went $5.58 in April to $16.53 in July as volume rose. But it does not bite at this size: 7,500 leads is 35% of the qualifying flow we already receive, so no supplier has to go and find anything new.

How far the price can actually rise

Banked value per lead is booking rate × show rate × revenue per arrival × 63%. Contribution is that less what we pay. The ceiling is what a lead could cost before it stops paying for itself at all — and it is a ceiling, not a profit, because the cost of delivering the shoot is in no feed here.

Half of the order	Leads	Booking rate	Paid now	Banked / lead	Contribution / lead	Ceiling	Headroom
2,500 kids (KIDSX)	2,500	6.97%	$14.33	$61.53	$47.21	$61.53	4.3×
5,000 adults (3 segments)	5,000	6.40%	$13.65	$42.71	$29.06	$42.71	3.1×

A kids lead is worth $18.14 more than an adult lead, so the kids price would have to reach $32.47 — 2.3× the $14.33 we pay now — before an extra adult beat an extra kid. Even the $19.68 Blue Rooms was measured at over the summer leaves the kids half comfortably ahead. Before either half stops washing its own face entirely: kids $61.53, adults $42.71.

The same 7,500 leads, split differently

This is the part worth arguing about. The split is a bigger lever than the price is.

Split	Bookings	Arrivals	Contracted	Ad cost	Banked less ad cost	Kids as share of KIDSX supply
0 kids + 7,500 adults	480	298	$508,494	$102,366	$217,985	—
2,500 kids + 5,000 adults THIS ORDER	494	321	$583,177	$104,066	$263,336	23%
3,000 kids + 4,500 adults	497	326	$598,114	$104,406	$272,406	28%
3,750 kids + 3,750 adults	501	333	$620,519	$104,916	$286,011	34%
5,000 kids + 2,500 adults	508	345	$657,861	$105,766	$308,687	46%
7,500 kids + 0 adults	523	368	$732,545	$107,465	$354,038	69%

2,500 kids + 5,000 adults is the weakest of the kids-tilted splits, and it is not close. Tilting the same 7,500 to 5,000 kids is worth $45,351 a month more for essentially the same ad cost, and still only takes 46% of KIDSX supply. The tension is real though: kids is the half with the price pressure, and it is the half that is weekend-and-morning shaped, so more kids is a diary decision as well as a media one.

What 7,500 actually means

You said 7,500 without a period, so here are all of them against today's whole business: 56,576 leads/month → 2,540 bookings → 1,945 arrivals → $3.55M contracted, on roughly $821,761 of ad spend (/Studio1_Capacity_Scenario.html, May-Aug 2026 settled).

Reading	Leads / month	Bookings	Arrivals	Chairs needed	Contracted	Banked	Ad spend	vs today
7,500 a month	7,500	494	321	623	$583,177	$367,402	$104,066	16%
7,500 a fortnight	16,250	1,071	696	1,350	$1,263,551	$796,037	$225,476	36%
7,500 a week	32,500	2,141	1,392	2,700	$2,527,102	$1,592,074	$450,952	71%
what it takes to hold today's revenue	45,609	3,005	1,954	3,789	$3,546,389	$2,234,225	$632,840	100%
TODAY, whole business	56,576	2,540	1,945	3,766	$3,546,389	$2,234,225	$821,761	100%

The headline is not 7,500 a month — it is the bottom row of that table. Buying only the segments that clear 5.5% holds today's $3.55M on 45,609 leads a month instead of 56,576 — 19% fewer leads — and the ad line falls from $821,761 to $632,840, a saving of $188,921 a month ($2,267,049 a year) for the same revenue.

And here is the thing that stops it: supply. Those 4 segments only deliver 21,470 leads a month between them today. 7,500 a month needs 0.35× that · 7,500 a fortnight needs 0.76× that · 7,500 a week needs 1.51× that · what it takes to hold today's revenue needs 2.12× that. So 7,500 a month is comfortable (35% of what we already buy at that quality), 7,500 a week is not available at any price we have seen, and holding revenue needs 2.12× the supply — the same wall the kids-studio work hit. Blue Rooms kids CPL went $5.58 in April to $16.53 in July as volume rose, and PMax's own conversion fell 4.82% to 1.99% as it scaled. Get a written price at the volume before committing to it.

Per 1,000 leads, so it can be scaled by hand

66 bookings · 43 arrivals · $77,757 contracted · $48,987 banked · $13,875 ad cost · 83 chairs.

What is measured here, and what is quoted

Computed at build time — moves when the caches move

Leads, bookings, booking rate and cost per lead per segment — 2026-06, 2026-07, 2026-08 from temp/dupes_cache/: 127,470 fresh leads, 6,489 matched bookings, blended 5.09%.
Cost — lead_costs.json, the supplier invoices (Alan's own portal, USA Models, Lead Pronto). Coverage on this population: 100.0% priced. Blended $14.52 per fresh lead, which independently cross-checks the $14.54 network figure measured over the same window.

Quoted from elsewhere — dated, never recomputed here

Show rate kids 70.4%, adult 62.1% · contracted per arrival kids $1,990, adult $1,707 · fill 79.3% · the whole-business baseline — all /Studio1_Capacity_Scenario.html, May-Aug 2026 settled.
Contracted → banked at 63% — /finance-cohort. A matured finance contract banks ~60% of the sale and the 2025 H1 cohort is 4 points behind 2024 H1 at month 12, so 63% is the blended figure including PIF, not a safe floor.

The four things this model does not know

Marginal is not average. Every rate here is what a segment does at today's volume. Buying twice as much of it buys the worse half. PMax proved it: 4.82% to 1.99% as it scaled.
The cost of delivering the shoot — studio, photographer, viewer commission, retouching, product. It is in no feed in this repo, so “banked less ad cost” is not profit. It is contribution before delivery.
What share of the non-ad cost is variable. Not buying a lead only saves what moves with volume. A studio and a salaried viewer do not.
Whether the room can absorb the mix change. A 33.3% kids buy is a diary change, not just a media change — kids shoots are weekend-and-morning shaped, and September showed what happens when mornings are cut: kids −42%.

The one-line read. Filtering to the 5.5% bar is worth about 29% more bookings on the same lead count, and roughly $2,267,049 a year of ad spend if you hold revenue instead of holding volume. Both numbers are real. Neither is reachable without more supply of exactly 4 segments — that is the thing to go and price.