Tunnel = a 1-mile stretch of road you own. Zone = a neighborhood-sized area of about 0.28 square miles that you own. Background = the whole member network, no geography limit. Full glossary
Veteran-owned. Jacksonville-based. Fixed rate per verified delivery. No auction, no Middleman Tax.
Jacksonville chimney sweeps market data
Customer acquisition cost
Derived: LocalIQ CPL benchmark divided by a 25 to 50 percent close rateCost per lead (FL)
LocalIQ Home Services benchmarks, cross-vertical range (chimney sweeping not separately published), Apr 2024 to Mar 2025Highest service-call window
WilDi Maps editorial judgment; no published seasonality benchmark meets our sourcing barThe product
WilDi Maps is not a single flat-rate product. You pick the tier that matches how local you need to be. All three are GPS-verified per claim, with no auction, no exchange rake, no Middleman Tax.
1-mile road strip
Premium
Hyper-local, just-in-time
Claim a one-mile stretch. When a member enters the strip, they get a just-in-time message, perfect for emergency services, on-route specials, and anything where being right there now beats brand awareness later.
Best for
0.28-square-mile area
Premium
Hyper-local, area-based
Claim a one-square-mile block, not tied to a single road. Catches the residential cluster, retail district, or industrial park where your work actually lives. Same just-in-time delivery as tunnels; different geometry.
Best for
City-wide rotation
From $0.25
per claim, tier-based
City-wide brand presence on rotation. Highest reach for the budget; best when familiarity beats precision. Per-delivery rate drops by tier (Enterprise: $0.25 / Pro: $0.32 / Local: $0.40 / Starter: $0.50). See /pricing for the live rate card.
Best for
What the member gets when an ad is claimed
If the member wants to act on the ad, the app navigates them straight to the advertiser's location.
Click-through to any URL: ordering page, brand site, blog post, lead form.
Open a specific page inside the WilDi app: promo details, daily specials, claim instructions.
See the full pricing breakdown on the pricing page.
The honest channel breakdown, not vendor pitches. Numbers below are public benchmarks, sourced inline. Each channel has a job; the question is which one delivers the homeowner with a failing system at a price that lets you stay profitable.
| Channel | Cost range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Google Local Services Ads | Per valid lead, price set by Google by location, job type, lead type and bidding mode. No published price. | Google's own words: 'You're charged for each valid lead you receive'; 'Lead prices may vary depending on your location, the job type, the type of lead, or your bidding mode.' Google publishes no per-vertical or per-market lead prices, so no dollar figure appears here. Note: from August 2026 Google is migrating LSA into Performance Max with pay-per-lead goals; you still pay only for valid leads, but manual maximum cost-per-lead bidding is going away. Google Local Services Ads help (charges, credits, Performance Max migration) |
| Google Search Ads | $93.69 to $228.15 cost per lead across published home-services trades; chimney sweeping not separately published | LocalIQ's per-trade benchmark (medians, 3,211 US campaigns, Apr 2024 to Mar 2025) does not include a chimney or dryer-vent row. We show the span across the trades it does publish and say so, rather than borrow a figure. National, auction-priced. LocalIQ Home Services Search Advertising Benchmarks (Apr 2024 to Mar 2025) |
| Meta (Facebook and Instagram) lead ads | $2.23 avg CPC · $41.26 cost per lead (Home and Home Improvement, leads campaigns) | Platform-benchmark from 726 US leads-objective campaigns, Apr 2024 to Jun 2025. A Meta lead is a form fill from someone scrolling, not someone physically in your area; conversion rate in the benchmark is 5.22%. WordStream Facebook Ads Benchmarks 2025 |
| Direct mail (EDDM postcards to older-home routes) | $0.260 per piece in postage; printing is extra and no all-in figure is published | USPS publishes the postage half only, flat per piece up to 3.3 ounces, no permit required. All-in per-piece figures that circulate online come from printers, not USPS, so none appears here. The channel is a reasonable fit for this trade because the buyer is older and home-tenured, but every piece goes to every door on the route whether or not the home has a fireplace. USPS Every Door Direct Mail Retail pricing |
| Lead marketplaces (Angi, HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack, Networx) | Angi and Thumbtack publish no per-lead prices; Networx publishes $10 to $100+ per shared lead and $15 to $120+ exclusive (2023) | Angi's 10-K: pros pay for the match 'regardless of whether the Pro ultimately provides the requested service'. Thumbtack caps a homeowner at five pros in the first four hours, then lifts the cap. Networx sends one pay-per-lead to up to four contractors. The FTC's 2022 to 2023 action against HomeAdvisor concerned the quality and source of leads sold to pros (allegations resolved by consent order). No qualifying source publishes a per-trade lead price for Angi or Thumbtack, so none appears here. Angi FY2025 10-K; Thumbtack help center; Networx help center; FTC |
| Static billboards (Jacksonville) | $3 to $10 CPM nationally (executed contracts); Jacksonville blended traditional-billboard CPM $5 to $12; static bulletins $1,800 to $6,500 and posters $800 to $2,200 per 4-week flight, production $400 to $1,400 extra (AdQuick 2026 guide) | No Jacksonville operator publishes a rate card, so the local figure is a marketplace listing and labelled secondary; the national range is from executed contracts. Impressions follow Geopath's definition: gross exposures including passengers and duplicated views, not people. Solomon Partners / OAAA 2025 CPM comparison; AdQuick Jacksonville listing; Geopath glossary |
| Digital billboards (Jacksonville) | Freeway digital bulletins $5 to $12 CPM (share of voice $3,000 to $12,000 per unit per month); downtown LEDs $12 to $22, JAX airport $15 to $28, programmatic exchange $4 to $11 (AdQuick Q2 2026 marketplace rates); self-serve plays from $0.01 per ~8-second play | A digital board rotates advertisers, typically 8 seconds of exposure every 64 to 80 seconds, so your exposure is a fraction of the board's traffic. Marketplace ranges are asking prices; the per-play price is the only platform-published billboard price that exists. AdQuick Jacksonville DOOH listing; Blip pricing |
| WilDi Maps, Cost Per Verified Delivery (CPVD) | From $0.25 (background, tier-based); tunnels and zones priced for hyper-local | GPS-verified human delivery in your chosen Jacksonville zone or tunnel. Especially efficient for niche markets like FL chimney work, where citywide impressions waste budget on homes without fireplaces. WilDi Maps pricing |
The pricing model
Cost Per Verified Delivery (CPVD) is a pricing model where you pay a tier-based rate (from $0.25) each time your message is delivered to a real phone moving through a real street segment you own. The delivery is GPS-verified: the device was physically present in the corridor at the time of delivery. Not an impression, not a click, not a "potential reach": a delivery to a known location at a known time.
CPVD replaces auction-based CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and CPC (cost per click), the pricing models that hide 30-50% of an HVAC budget in the Middleman Tax. No exchanges, no demand-side platforms, no supply-side platforms, no resellers. One fixed rate, one verified delivery, one operator on the other end.
Read the full breakdown of where every dollar of an ad budget actually goes: What is the Middleman Tax?
Also known as ad platform fees. What is the Middleman Tax?
Same budget. Follow where the dollars actually go. Pick your vertical for a personalized waste estimate, or leave it on Average for the industry-wide baseline.
That's $30,000 per year. Here's where every dollar ends up:
What you put in
27% taken by SSPs and DSPs before an ad runs
26% on made-for-advertising sites, unmeasurable and non-viewable placements, and bots
47% of what you put in
Same budget, same ambition
Fixed verified human delivery · no auction
100% of your budget, a known quantity
$15,870 stops flowing to middlemen. 93,744 WilDi verified deliveries instead.
Priority Access to Jacksonville pilot zone and tunnel coverage. Background brands can use the Phase 1 Jacksonville rollout now as we start expanding.
Baseline Middleman Tax is anchored to the ANA Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study: Complete Report (Association of National Advertisers, December 5, 2023), which found that transaction costs, primarily DSP and SSP fees, account for 29 percent of the ad dollar, and that only 36 cents of every dollar entering a DSP effectively reaches the consumer once invalid traffic, non-viewable impressions and made-for-advertising sites are counted. Per-vertical estimates are not pure fee figures: they blend that fee skim with WordStream cost-per-click benchmarks and DoubleVerify invalid-traffic rates. Full methodology and sources →
Jacksonville's median home year built is 1990 , meaning a typical home is now 36 years old, well past original-system replacement age. The neighborhoods below combine housing-stock age, AC-strain factors, and replacement-driven demand.
Pre-1950 housing stock, among the highest concentration of original wood-burning fireplaces in the metro and aging dryer-vent runs in older single-family homes.
Historic 1920s-1940s homes with original masonry chimneys; dense single-family ownership keeps both flue inspection and dryer-vent demand steady year-round.
1970s-1980s suburban stock with the FL-typical mix of wood-burning fireplaces (now aged 40+ years) and long dryer-vent runs ripe for annual cleaning.
Premium homes with statement gas/wood fireplaces. Annual inspection is a status purchase here, and dryer-vent service is bundled into household maintenance.
Retiree-dense 1960s-1980s housing. High daytime dryer usage and fixed-income owners willing to schedule preventative dryer-vent cleaning before lint becomes a fire risk.
Mixed-age single-family stock with high dryer-cycle volume; the strongest pure-volume neighborhood for dryer-vent cleaning even where fireplaces are rare.
For operators on shared-lead platforms
Angi and Thumbtack publish no per-lead prices, and Angi's own 10-K says a pro pays for the match regardless of whether the pro ultimately provides the service. Thumbtack caps a homeowner at five pros in the first four hours and then lifts the cap; Networx sends one pay-per-lead to up to four contractors. That is the shared-lead model. CPVD is a different model entirely: you own the corridor, the delivery is verified to a real phone, and there's no shared-lead dilution. See how the math compares for chimney and dryer-vent operators.
See the lead-marketplace comparisonHonest take
WilDi isn't always the right call for a chimney/dryer-vent shop. A few honest cases where the traditional channel wins:
If your shop already has a referral relationship with two or three Jacksonville HVAC companies, that pipeline is essentially free and high-converting. No paid channel (including CPVD) beats a warm referral from a tech who's already in the homeowner's attic looking at a dryer-vent run. Build the partnership first; advertise to fill the gap.
Hearth retailers and stove dealers in northeast Florida feed inspection and chimney-cap work to the sweeps they trust. If you can secure preferred-vendor status with one or two regional dealers, you'll likely outperform any paid acquisition channel for the wood-burning side of the book.
National chimney franchises with centralized media buying get scale economics on Google Search and direct mail that a single-metro shop can't replicate. If you're a franchisee operating under a national brand, leverage the franchise's media buy first; layer WilDi for the hyper-local corridors the national buy misses.
Post-chimney-fire restoration work is sold through insurance adjuster relationships and IICRC-certified contractor networks, not consumer advertising. CPVD doesn't help you reach a State Farm adjuster. Those wins come from claim-volume relationships built over years.
Yes. Pretending otherwise wastes ad budget. Florida winters are mild, peak wood-burning usage is roughly 3-4 months (December through February), and many FL fireplaces are gas inserts or decorative statement pieces rather than primary heat sources. The total addressable market for pure chimney sweeping in Duval County is a fraction of what a comparable-population metro in the Northeast or Midwest sees. That's exactly why most successful Jacksonville chimney pros run a blended chimney-plus-dryer-vent book. Dryer-vent demand is year-round, the equipment overlaps, and CSIA training covers both.
Gas fireplaces still need annual inspection (logs, valves, venting, CO check) but rarely a creosote sweep, so revenue per visit is lower and tickets cluster in the fall. Wood-burning chimneys are the highest-ticket, highest-margin work but limited to older neighborhoods like San Marco and Riverside/Avondale. Dryer-vent cleaning is the year-round volume engine. Every single-family home is a candidate and turnaround is fast. No source that meets our sourcing bar publishes a dryer-vent ticket average, so we don't quote one; use your own. A healthy Jacksonville sweep typically books wood-burning sweeps in October/November, gas inspections through fall, and dryer-vent cleanings every other month of the year.
CSIA (Chimney Safety Institute of America) is the recognized national credential for chimney technicians. In a thin FL market with several handyman-tier competitors, CSIA certification is one of the few credibility signals a homeowner can verify independently, and the CSIA certified-provider directory is publicly searchable. Featuring CSIA certification in your tunnel or zone delivery message is worth testing, particularly in premium neighborhoods like Ponte Vedra where the buyer is researching before they call. We don't publish a claim-rate lift figure for it because we have not measured one.
Cost Per Verified Delivery is WilDi Maps' pricing model. You pay from $0.25 each time your message is delivered to a real phone moving through a real street segment you claim on background. The delivery is GPS-verified: the device was physically present in the corridor at the time of delivery. Tunnels (1-mile road strips) and zones (about 0.28 square mile areas) are priced higher because they're hyper-local and inventory is finite. No bots, no off-screen impressions, no auction, no Middleman Tax. For a thin niche like FL chimney work, CPVD is especially efficient because you can pay for delivery only in the neighborhoods where fireplaces and long dryer-vent runs actually exist.
It's serious enough to be a real selling point. The National Fire Protection Association's research on home clothes dryer fires identifies failure to clean the dryer as the leading contributing factor. We quote the finding rather than a fire count, because the counts that circulate online are older US Fire Administration figures that get relabelled as current NFPA ones. Most homeowner policies don't require professional dryer-vent cleaning, but HOA-managed communities often require documented annual cleaning. Lead with the NFPA finding and the HOA-requirement angle in dryer-vent-heavy zones like Westside and Arlington.
When the addressable market is concentrated in known geography. This is exactly the FL chimney case. A citywide Google Search Ads campaign for 'chimney sweep Jacksonville' pays full price for clicks from condo dwellers, renters, and homes built after 2000 that have no fireplace at all. A WilDi zone over San Marco, Riverside/Avondale, or Mandarin pays only for delivery into the streets where pre-1990 single-family homes actually sit. For a blended chimney-plus-dryer-vent business, a zone over Arlington or Westside captures dryer-vent-eligible homes at volume without spilling budget into low-density commercial corridors.
Background reaches everyone active in the WilDi app: nationwide by default, or limited to one area you choose (your city, your side of town) so budget is never spent outside it. A zone is a neighborhood-sized area you hold exclusively: while it is yours, no competitor can run there. A tunnel is a one-mile stretch of road you can place anywhere, and it follows the road's contours, ideal for the approach to your shop or a route your customers already drive.
One verified delivery of your offer to the phone of one real person who was physically inside your chosen geography at that moment, confirmed by GPS on the device itself. That person also taps to acknowledge the offer, so a delivery is never an invisible impression. Bots, background tabs, and off-screen impressions cannot generate one. You are billed only when a verified delivery happens.
The pilot market is Jacksonville, Florida, live now. New metros open as our opted-in local audience grows there. If you want your market next, talk to sales.
The Starter tier opens with a $50 deposit, and that deposit becomes your ad budget. Background deliveries on Starter run $0.50 per verified delivery, so the first deposit buys 100 GPS-verified deliveries to the phones of real local people out on the road. There is no auction and no platform fee stacked on top.
About this analysis
Written by Timm Ross, founder of WilDi Maps · Jacksonville-based · Veteran-owned. We run our own delivery mesh in this market and hold ourselves to the same numbers we publish.
More about WilDi MapsPriority Access is open to the Jacksonville pilot cohort. Fixed rate. No auction. No bidding. No Middleman Tax.
