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
Window replacement is a high-ticket home-improvement category, and every lead vendor selling into it has an acquisition-cost number ready. None of them publish a method or a sample, so none of them are on this page. What exists at our sourcing bar is category level, not trade level: WordStream's 2026 Google Ads benchmarks put Home and Home Improvement at a $90.92 cost per lead and a $8.33 cost per click across 13,474 US search campaigns run between April 2025 and March 2026, printed as one combined row with no windows breakout. LocalIQ's home-services edition, which does break out individual trades, covers HVAC, heating and furnaces, plumbing, roofing and gutters, and electricians. There is no Doors and Windows category in it, which is why the roughly $200 lead cost that circulates for the category has no source behind it.
You can still do the arithmetic honestly. A contractor paying the home-improvement category median of $90.92 per search lead and closing a quarter to a half of what they pay for is spending roughly $182 to $364 to land one customer. That is our arithmetic on WordStream's category median, not a published windows figure, and it moves with your own close rate. Window tickets are large enough that most installers can absorb considerably more than that, which is precisely the reason to measure the real number rather than accept a vendor's.
Demand is seasonal in coastal and storm-exposed markets. The Atlantic hurricane season runs June through November, which drives insurance-related replacement demand on top of the steady baseline of aging single-pane and early double-pane windows reaching end of life. Those two cycles have different acquisition math, so a blended annual figure hides more than it reveals.
Our arithmetic: WordStream Home and Home Improvement CPL $90.92 at a 25% to 50% close rate
WordStream Google Ads Benchmarks 2026, Apr 2025 to Mar 2026No Doors and Windows category exists in any benchmark at our bar
LocalIQ Home Services Search Advertising BenchmarksGoogle Local Services Ads charge per lead, but Google publishes no prices. Its help center says only that 'you're charged for each valid lead you receive through your Local Services ad' and that 'lead prices may vary depending on your location, the job type, the type of lead, or your bidding mode'. There is no published Doors and Windows lead price anywhere in Google's help center, so any figure you have been shown for it came from an agency. From August 2026 Google is also migrating Local Services Ads into Performance Max with pay-per-lead goals for US home-service businesses, and manual maximum cost-per-lead bidding is going away.
Google Search Ads is the channel with a real published benchmark, at the category level. WordStream's 2026 edition puts Home and Home Improvement at $90.92 per lead, $8.33 per click, a 6.47% click-through rate and an 8.05% conversion rate. LocalIQ's separate home-services study, covering April 2024 to March 2025, puts home services overall at $90.92 per lead and $7.85 per click. Both are national medians on an auction, so a specific metro, a specific quality score and a post-storm demand spike all move them, and impact-rated and premium-brand keywords sit above whatever the category median is in a given month.
Lead marketplaces mostly do not publish prices. Networx is the exception: its help center lists $10 to $100+ per lead on Pay Per Lead and $15 to $120+ on Exclusive Leads, and states that a single Pay Per Lead 'will go to up to 4 contractors in total' (its page was last updated in 2023). Thumbtack publishes no dollar figures but does state a cap of five pros contacted in the first four hours of a customer's search. Angi's FY2025 annual report describes lead revenue as fees paid by pros for consumer matches 'regardless of whether the Pro ultimately provides the requested service'. Nobody at our bar publishes shared-lead close rates for high-ticket window work, so we do not quote one.
Home and Home Improvement combined row, Apr 2025 to Mar 2026; CPC $8.33
WordStream Google Ads Benchmarks 2026Google states prices vary by location, job type, lead type and bidding mode
Google Local Services Ads HelpPay Per Lead; goes to up to 4 contractors in total (Networx help center, 2023)
Networx: How much do leads costTwo demand signals matter more than raw traffic for window installers: housing-stock age and post-storm timing. Older neighborhoods with original single-pane or early double-pane windows past their useful life are a predictable, evergreen lead source, and a completed install on one home tends to seed interest on the same block, since new windows are a highly visible exterior upgrade.
Billboards illustrate the volume-without-precision problem, though not in the direction billboard sellers imply. The primary cross-channel comparison, published by Solomon Partners and hosted by the OAAA in 2025, puts out-of-home bulletins at $3 to $10 per thousand and posters at $3 to $13, with social media at $2 to $8 and digital display at $5 to $6 on the same table. Billboards are not the cheap channel per impression, and neither is WilDi: we sell a different unit. As a live market example, the AdQuick 2026 Jacksonville guide lists static bulletins at $1,800 to $6,500 per four-week flight and posters at $800 to $2,200, on a blended local traditional-billboard CPM of $5 to $12, with digital running $5 to $12 CPM on freeway bulletins and $12 to $22 on downtown LEDs, giving each advertiser about 8 seconds of exposure every 64 to 80 seconds, which are marketplace asking prices rather than measured rates. Geopath, the body that defines the out-of-home impression, is explicit that impressions include passengers, include duplicated views, and 'are not the number of people who see the advertisement'. Only a fraction of that count is a homeowner actively considering a whole-house window project.
Cost Per Verified Delivery (CPVD) starts from $0.25 per GPS-verified delivery on background rotation, with zones and tunnels priced for hyper-local precision. A zone over an older-home cluster captures the evergreen replacement demand, while a tunnel along a post-storm corridor catches homeowners in the window between an insurance claim and choosing an installer. A delivery is not a lead and not an impression: it is one offer to one opted-in person, paid for when they claim it.
Bulletins $3 to $10, posters $3 to $13; social media $2 to $8 on the same table
Solomon Partners / OAAA Major Media CPM Comparison, 2025On the dimensions a window installation contractor evaluates before committing budget. Every figure below is the published benchmark named in the last column, not a blended estimate, and where a platform publishes no price we say so rather than filling the cell.
| Channel | Published cost | Best case fit | Source and caveat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Local Services Ads | Not published | Verified replacement and impact-rated upgrades | Google states prices vary by location, job type and bidding mode; no Doors and Windows price exists; Performance Max migration from Aug 2026 |
| Google Search Ads | $90.92 per lead, $8.33 CPC (home improvement) | Impact-rated and premium-brand replacement searches | WordStream 2026, one combined Home and Home Improvement row; no windows breakout exists |
| Lead marketplaces (Angi, Thumbtack, HomeAdvisor) | Networx $10 to $100+; Angi and Thumbtack publish none | Volume replacement leads | Networx help center (2023): one lead goes to up to 4 contractors; Angi FY2025 10-K: pros pay per match either way |
| Static / digital billboards | $3 to $13 CPM across OOH formats | Broad brand awareness, no homeowner filter | Solomon Partners / OAAA 2025; impressions are gross exposures including passengers, per Geopath |
| WilDi Maps CPVD | From $0.25 per GPS-verified delivery | Older-home mesh + post-storm corridor | Our published rate card; no auction, no shared leads, charged only when the member claims |
A typical window-installer CPVD deployment combines zones, tunnels, and background rotation timed around both housing-stock age and storm calendar.
Zones are neighborhood-sized residential clusters of about 0.28 square miles each. The right zone is an older neighborhood, typically decades past construction, where original single-pane or early double-pane windows are failing seals and past useful life. The visible new-window install compounds neighbor interest the way a repaint job does.
Tunnels are 1-mile road strips, most valuable in the weeks after a named storm, when insurance-driven replacement demand concentrates in specific corridors and homeowners are actively shopping quotes while driving the affected streets daily.
Background is city-wide rotation at the $0.25+ base rate, useful for building recall ahead of storm season and for capturing insurance-discount-driven demand outside the immediate post-storm window.
The natural starter deployment is one zone over an older-home cluster plus background rotation, with a tunnel activated along storm-impacted corridors when relevant.
The 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.
No benchmark publisher at our sourcing bar breaks windows out as its own category, so there is no window-replacement cost per lead to quote and we do not invent one. The closest published figure is WordStream's 2026 Home and Home Improvement row: $90.92 per lead at a $8.33 cost per click, across US search campaigns run April 2025 to March 2026. Close a quarter to a half of those leads and you are spending roughly $182 to $364 per customer, which is our arithmetic rather than a published number. WilDi Maps Cost Per Verified Delivery starts from $0.25 per GPS-verified delivery on background rotation.
There is no published windows-specific figure. LocalIQ's home-services benchmark has no Doors and Windows category, and WordStream's 2026 edition prints Home and Home Improvement as a single combined row at $90.92 per lead and $8.33 per click. Google publishes no Local Services Ads lead prices for any trade, so the roughly $200 Doors and Windows lead cost that circulates online is not attributable to Google or to any benchmark with a stated method and sample.
Only Networx publishes prices: $10 to $100+ per lead on Pay Per Lead, $15 to $120+ on Exclusive Leads, with a single Pay Per Lead going to 'up to 4 contractors in total' (its help page was last updated in 2023). Thumbtack publishes no dollar figures but caps a customer at contacting five pros in the first four hours of their search. Angi's FY2025 10-K states that pros pay for the consumer match whether or not they end up doing the job. Nobody at our sourcing bar publishes shared-lead close rates, so we do not quote one. For high-ticket window work the structural point is what matters: you are paying for the introduction, not the job, and you are rarely the only one paying for it.
Hyperlocal advertising for window installers means targeting the specific neighborhoods where housing stock is old enough for original windows to be failing, plus the specific corridors homeowners drive in the weeks after a storm. A zone over an older-home cluster captures the evergreen replacement demand, and a tunnel along a post-storm corridor catches homeowners while they are actively comparing installer quotes.
Cost Per Verified Delivery is WilDi Maps pricing for hyperlocal delivery. A window installer can own a 0.28-square-mile older-home zone, a 1-mile post-storm-corridor tunnel, or city-wide background rotation, and pays from $0.25 each time a real phone is GPS-verified moving through that mesh. There is no auction, no shared leads, and no Middleman Tax. A delivery is not a lead and not an impression; it is one offer to one opted-in person, charged when they claim it.
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.
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.
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.
Four public tiers: Starter ($50 minimum deposit, background only), Local ($250, up to 2 tunnels and 1 zone), Pro ($1,000, up to 8 tunnels and 5 zones), and Enterprise ($3,000, up to 25 tunnels and 15 zones). Per-delivery background rates step down by tier, from $0.50 on Starter to $0.25 on Enterprise. An Agency tier is available through sales.
About this analysis
Written by Timm Ross, founder of WilDi Maps. Jacksonville-based. Veteran-owned. Sources cited inline; numbers updated as the underlying research updates.
Published · Last updated
More about Timm RossFixed from $0.25 per GPS-verified delivery. No auction, no bid stream, no Middleman Tax.
