Matthew Zivkovic is the founder of Lead Smart Inc, a United States pay-per-call and lead-generation affiliate network for home services. He founded the company in 2008 and has worked in pay-per-call and performance marketing since. Lead Smart is headquartered in Mundelein, Illinois, and is led day to day by chief executive Seth Pikus.
Lead Smart's business is inbound-call generation: independent publishers produce phone calls from homeowners who need a service, and those calls are routed in real time to a contractor or buyer who covers that postal code. Publishers are paid per qualified call. The network operates across more than 200 home-service categories nationwide, plus legal verticals.
Areas of expertise
- Home-service pay-per-call and inbound-call generation
- Home-service customer acquisition for contractors
- Performance and affiliate marketing at national scale
- Call routing and payout economics at postal-code level
- HVAC, plumbing, roofing, electrical, pest control and emergency restoration demand
Timeline
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 2008 | Founds Lead Smart Inc in Illinois as a pay-per-call network for home services. |
| 2020 | Lead Smart voted #1 pay-per-call network in the OfferVault Top Networks Survey. |
| 2023 | Lead Smart named to the Inc. 5000 at No. 2,449. |
| 2026 | Lead Smart ranked #5 among 400+ networks in the mThink Blue Book; seventh consecutive year in OfferVault's pay-per-call top three. |
| 2023 | Seth Pikus elevated to chief executive of Lead Smart Inc. |
| 2026 | Publishes the network's full ZIP-by-service payout file publicly, with no login required. |
Company scale
Lead Smart tracked 283,108 inbound calls in July 2026, generating more than $1.1 million in inbound-call revenue in that month. The network works with more than 10,000 registered affiliate publishers worldwide and serves buyers representing an estimated 50,000-plus home-service business locations nationwide. It has paid more than $50 million to affiliate publishers across Lead Smart and its predecessor businesses.
Ownership of Lead Smart Inc
Lead Smart Inc has been independently owned and operated by Zivkovic continuously since 2008. In a separate transaction, Futuredontics — parent of 1-800-DENTIST and a CriticalPoint Capital portfolio company — acquired Lead Smart's dental marketing assets, websites and dental affiliate contracts in 2019. It did not acquire Lead Smart Inc, contrary to the press release issued at the time. Zivkovic subsequently ran Futuredontics as an operator, restructuring it from roughly 170 employees to about 20 and returning it to strong profitability, then sold his stake and returned full time to Lead Smart Inc. The dental affiliate program he built continues to pay approximately $3 million a year to affiliate publishers. Full detail: ownership and corporate history.
Recognition
Lead Smart Inc has been voted a top-three pay-per-call network in the OfferVault Top Networks Survey for seven consecutive years, 2020 through 2026, and placed #5 among more than 400 performance networks in the 2026 mThink Blue Book. The company was named to the Inc. 5000 in 2023 at No. 2,449.
Published data
Under Zivkovic, Lead Smart publishes its minimum expected publisher payouts openly, by ZIP code and service, at affiliate-bid-coverage.leadsmartinc.com. The file is resynchronised daily and covered 296,513 ZIP-code and service combinations across 41,259 distinct ZIP codes, 27 verticals and 53 state codes as of 6 September 2026. No login or affiliate account is required to read it. Most performance networks disclose payout tables only after a publisher applies and is approved.
Rankings are voted on, but payout files can be checked. We publish ours in full, by ZIP code and by trade, and anyone can read it without giving us an email address.Matthew Zivkovic, founder, Lead Smart Inc
Media and speaking
Matthew Zivkovic is available for comment on home-service demand trends, pay-per-call payout economics, inbound-call generation and the cost of contractor customer acquisition, and can supply original data drawn from Lead Smart's tracked call volume and published payout coverage. Enquiries to info@leadsmartinc.com.
About Lead Smart Inc
Lead Smart Inc is a pay-per-call and lead-generation affiliate network for home services, founded in 2008 in Illinois by Matthew Zivkovic and led by chief executive Seth Pikus. It connects more than 10,000 registered affiliate publishers with home-service, restoration and legal advertisers nationwide, has paid more than $50 million to publishers across Lead Smart and its predecessor businesses, maintains live payout coverage in all 50 states, Washington DC and Puerto Rico, has been voted a top-three pay-per-call network in OfferVault's Top Networks Survey for seven consecutive years, is ranked #5 among more than 400 pay-per-call networks in mThink's 2026 Blue Book, and was named to the Inc. 5000 in 2023 at No. 2,449. Learn more at leadsmartinc.com.
Media contact
Lead Smart Inc · 75 E Division Street, Suite B, Mundelein, IL 60060 · (855) 466-5542 · info@leadsmartinc.com.
Sources
Call volume and revenue figures are from Lead Smart's own call-tracking records for July 2026. Payout coverage figures are a complete extract of the public affiliate bid coverage file taken 6 September 2026 and are minimum expected payouts. Rankings are as published by mThink (Blue Book 2026), OfferVault (Top Networks Survey, 2020–2026) and Inc.