What this covers
How should CPA versus rev-share be chosen?
CPA fits geos where LTV is short and fraud is noisy. Rev-share fits products with a real month-three tail. Hybrid is a compromise that still needs a negative-carryover rule written down, not implied. The worked maths lives in the insights article on valuing rev-share.
What does quality control look like in practice?
Bonus abuse, duplicate accounts, incentivised junk and brand-bidding on your own terms. Partners who cannot pass a cohort view lose the deal, however large last month's clicks were.
How do you recruit without wrecking the existing book?
New partners are added against a gap in geo or product, not against a volume target. Recruiting a clone of your best partner at a fatter CPA is how programmes leak.
What reporting do affiliates actually need?
FTD, NGR, chargebacks and a status they can trust. A 40-column portal that disagrees with finance is how good partners leave.
Where do affiliates sit next to CRM?
A rev-share player who churns on day four is a CRM failure billed to the partner. Retention and affiliate terms have to share a definition of value, which is why this line links to retention CRM.
How it's measured
| KPI | What it tells you | When we act on it |
|---|---|---|
| NGR after quality | Revenue that survives fraud and bonus filters. | Act when headline NGR and finance NGR diverge. |
| FTD quality mix | Share of FTDs that reach a second deposit. | Act when a partner's second-deposit rate collapses. |
| Effective CPA | True cost per quality FTD across deal types. | Act when rev-share implied CPA beats the CPA deals you are signing. |
| Partner concentration | Dependence on the top three sources. | Act when one partner is the business. |
What the first 90 days look like
- Days 1–20: deal inventory, cohort quality by partner, chargeback and bonus-abuse view, portal vs finance reconciliation.
- Days 21–45: freeze or renegotiate the deals that fail quality. Write the negative-carryover and brand-bid rules in the contract, not in Slack.
- Days 46–70: recruit only against a named gap. Onboard with the same event definitions media uses.
- Days 71–90: lock a quality scorecard. Report NGR after filters as the number the programme is for.
Common failure modes
Paying CPA on players who never come back
A cheap FTD that dies on the welcome bonus is not cheap. If the deal cannot see D7 depositing, you are buying a screenshot.
Rev-share with no negative carryover and no memory
Partners keep the upside months and you keep the bonus disasters. That is not a partnership. It is a one-way option.
Letting the loudest affiliate set the terms for everyone
Most-favoured terms spread like a leak. The book should be priced per value, which is the opposite of a panic match.
Related: attribution so partner FTDs match the ledger and retention economics that decide whether a rev-share player was worth it. Up to the MOTIV services hub, where affiliate management sits next to media and CRM.