An invisible economic engine activates within 200 milliseconds when consumers hit submit on quote request forms. The moment of submission transforms shoppers into tradable assets - their data encrypted, auctioned among dozens of companies, sold to highest bidder, and delivered to a sales agent potentially a thousand miles away, all before the thank you page finishes loading. The central law governing this industry is brutal: leads lose roughly 10% of their value for every hour without contact, making the five-minute response window an empirical boundary between profit and waste. Premium leads require three inseparable elements: prior express written consent (PEWC) that's auditable and legally defensible since TCPA violations cost $500-$1,500 per call; qualifying data attributes beyond contact information; and precise timing stamps that start the decay curve. The three-tier marketplace operates through generators focused on traffic arbitrage, aggregators providing market-making infrastructure through ping-post auctions, and end buyers converting leads to revenue. Vertical economics vary dramatically: insurance represents the largest stable market; mortgage is completely volatile based on interest rates; solar pricing depends almost entirely on zip code ($150 in California vs $30 in North Dakota); and legal commands the highest prices at $200-$500 per lead due to massive potential case values.