Pay Per Call's Shake-Out Year

Quick Q&A: Todd Stearn, CEO of Aragon Advertising, explains why 2026 will separate the specialists from the generalists, and how AI voice agents are rewriting the economics of call marketing.

Blue Book: What’s the defining trend for pay per call heading into 2026?

Todd Stearn: Consolidation around winners. This started in 2025, and I see it accelerating. There won’t be as much room for non-differentiated broker businesses as there was in the past. Pay per call companies who want to stay relevant in 2026 must become highly specialized in verticals, provide strategic growth consulting, distribution transparency, and deploy home-grown technology and first-party data for unique value-adds.

BB: What role will AI play and how is it going to change the industry?

TS: AI in the call space will be a tremendous value-add, as voice agents replace humans en masse to conduct lead qualification. Further, call dispositions with AI will provide marketers with instant post-call marketing measurement capabilities.

BB: How much growth is left in the pay per call market?

TS: Pay per call has a lot of growth ahead of it. Three areas stand out for us. First, the private equity embrace of the home services industry has created many more players looking for marketing services. Second, AI voice agents significantly reduce CAC, which will lead to more creative marketing methodologies being deployed where the economics were previously unsuitable for investment. Third, as the call industry becomes more commoditized, strategic consulting services will become increasingly valuable to brands and local service businesses.

Blue Book view: Stearn’s outlook captures a market at an inflection point: the easy money from brokering undifferentiated call traffic is drying up, while AI-driven cost efficiencies are opening new opportunities for those positioned to exploit them. His emphasis on vertical specialization, proprietary technology, and consulting services as competitive moats reflects a clear-eyed reading of where value will accrue as the sector matures. It’s the kind of strategic thinking that has kept Aragon ahead of the curve for over a decade.

Aragon Advertising is a pay per call network specializing in home services, insurance, and financial services verticals. Todd Stearn founded the company in 2013.