Beginner · Chapter 1

Who pays whom in iGaming affiliate marketing

5 minutes

Affiliate marketing is a deal where you are paid for results, not for effort. In iGaming, the result is usually a new player who registers at a licensed online casino or sportsbook and makes a first deposit. The operator pays you only when that happens, so everything in this industry is built around proving who sent which player.

Media buying is one way to do it: you buy advertising (social ads, search, push, native, Telegram) and send the people who click to an offer. If the commission you earn is bigger than what you spent on ads, you made money. If not, you paid to learn. Most professionals in this industry call it traffic arbitrage for exactly that reason.

The five parties in the chain

1. OperatorThe licensed casino or sportsbook. Holds the player’s money and pays commissions.
2. Affiliate programThe operator’s partner department: tracking, offers, terms, payouts.
3. NetworkBundles offers from many operators behind one account and one payout.
4. Media buying teamBuyers who share tools, creatives, ad accounts and budgets to scale.
5. You, the affiliateYou own the audience or buy the traffic and send it to offers.

Not every deal has every layer. A large review site may sign directly with an operator. A beginner usually starts with a network or a team, because one relationship opens many offers and someone has already tested what converts. The trade offs between those routes are covered in our article on private and public iGaming networks.

Remember: you are an outsourced marketing channel for a regulated business. The operator’s licence rules apply to your ads too.

Beginner · Chapter 2

How the money moves, step by step

6 minutes

The path at the top of this page is the whole business in one line. Here is what happens at each stop, and where beginners lose money without noticing.

1. Click. The visitor clicks your tracking link. The platform stores a click ID tied to you and, if you add them, your own sub-IDs (ad, placement, keyword).
2. Registration. The visitor opens an account. From now on the player is attributed to you for as long as your contract says.
3. First deposit (FTD). The player funds the account. This is the event most deals are built around.
4. Qualification. The deposit has to pass the program’s rules, called the baseline: a minimum amount, sometimes wagering, within a set number of days. Cancelled, charged back or fraudulent deposits do not count.
5. Hold and review. Programs hold commission for a while to catch fraud and chargebacks, then reconcile statistics, usually monthly.
6. Payout. You get paid on the schedule in your deal. Your ad money left your account weeks earlier.

The gap between paying for ads today and getting paid weeks later is the number one reason beginners run out of budget before a working campaign pays back. Plan for at least one full payout cycle.

Try it in the money path above: keep everything the same and lower “Deposits that qualify” from 70% to 40%. Same traffic, same deposits, very different result. That is why experienced buyers read the baseline before the headline CPA.

Beginner · Chapter 3

CPA, RevShare and Hybrid: how you get paid

8 minutes

Every deal comes in one of three shapes. The shape decides who carries the risk that a player turns out to be worth nothing, and whether your income arrives once or month after month.

For scale: published 2026 benchmarks put Tier 1 casino CPA at roughly $150 to $400 per first time depositor and casino RevShare at 25% to 45% of net gaming revenue, with a median around 30% (Track360, 2026). Beginners start lower. Negative carryover means that if your players win more than they lose in a month, the negative balance rolls into the next month and has to be earned back first (Scaleo explains it).

Match the model to your cash, not to the biggest number in the pitch. If your budget covers less than three months of spend, CPA or Hybrid keeps you alive long enough to learn.

Our longer guide compares the three models with worked examples: CPA vs RevShare vs Hybrid.

Beginner · Chapter 4

Where the traffic comes from

6 minutes

Affiliates split into two camps. Some own an audience: a website, a YouTube channel, a stream, a Telegram channel. Others buy attention with ads. Owned audiences grow slowly and cost little to keep. Bought traffic starts fast and costs money every day. Tap a card to flip it.

The market you target changes everything: deposit sizes, ad costs and whether promotion is legal at all. On 25 September 2026, for example, Brazil banned fixed-odds betting and its advertising, which closed one of the biggest affiliate markets overnight (what that means for affiliates). More on markets in best GEOs for iGaming affiliates and channels in best traffic sources.

Beginner · Chapter 5

Tracking and the numbers that matter

6 minutes

If you cannot see which ad produced a depositing player, you are guessing. Tracking fixes that. The platform gives you a link, you add sub-IDs for your ad, placement or keyword, and the platform reports registrations and deposits back to your own tracker through postbacks, server to server messages sent the moment something happens.

Five numbers to watch every day

Effective CPA is the payout multiplied by the share of your depositors who qualify. If 60% qualify, a €100 CPA is worth €60 per depositor to you. Compare that with what one depositor costs you in ads, and you know whether to scale or stop.

Check your tracker against the program’s statistics every week. Small gaps are normal. A growing gap is a question you ask your manager in writing, early.

Setup details are in our guide to S2S postbacks and attribution, and the daily routine in iGaming affiliate KPIs. The full setup with a click tracker is in the Intermediate track.

Beginner · Chapter 6

The rules that get you paid, or not

5 minutes

Program terms are long, but the forbidden list is almost the same everywhere. Break it and commission is withheld; repeat it and the account is closed. Regulators increasingly hold operators responsible for everything their affiliates do, so operators check (Ontario’s rules are a good example).

Mini game: allowed or not allowed?

• Running search ads on the operator’s own brand name without permission.
  AllowedNot allowed

• Writing an honest review that shows the real bonus terms and wagering rules.
  AllowedNot allowed

• Paying people a small reward to register and deposit through your link.
  AllowedNot allowed

• Sending traffic to a country the operator is not licensed for.
  AllowedNot allowed

• Using a pre-lander that explains the offer clearly before the visitor moves on.
  AllowedNot allowed

• Promising players they will win their money back.
  AllowedNot allowed

• Registering yourself through your own link to test the funnel.
  AllowedNot allowed

The short version

• Promote only licensed operators, only in markets where promotion is allowed.
• Never target minors or people who excluded themselves. Keep responsible gambling messages where the market requires them.
• No promises of winnings, no “free money” framing of bonuses.
• Follow each ad platform’s gambling policy. It is often stricter than the law.

Country by country details: iGaming advertising compliance by country.

Beginner · Chapter 7

Your first campaign, as a checklist

5 minutes

The path that works for most beginners is boring on purpose. Tick the steps as you go; your progress stays in this browser.

• Pick one market and one traffic source you understand. Five countries at once teaches you nothing.
• Read the full offer terms: baseline, hold, allowed traffic, caps, payment schedule, carryover.
• Ask your manager in writing about anything the terms do not answer.
• Set up tracking and postbacks before you spend a single euro.
• Prepare 3 to 5 creatives and one pre-lander that match the market and its rules.
• Set a test budget you can afford to lose, sized to reach real depositors, not just clicks.
• Decide in advance when you stop: for example, cost per depositor above effective CPA after a set spend.
• Compare your numbers with the program’s statistics every week.
• Scale only what works, in small steps, and keep testing new creatives.
• Negotiate rates only when you have volume and quality to show.

When you have data, this guide shows what leverage looks like: negotiating iGaming affiliate deals.

Finished the Beginner track? Continue with the Intermediate track, starting with tracking setup.

Intermediate · Chapter 1

Tracking setup: a click tracker, S2S postbacks and sub-IDs

8 minutes

The program’s statistics tell you how many players you sent. They do not tell you which ad, placement or pre-lander sent them, and that is the only question that matters once you spend real money. A click tracker is your own record of every click, and S2S postbacks are how the affiliate platform tells that record what happened next.

How the pieces connect

1. Ad click. The ad platform sends the visitor to your tracker’s campaign link together with its own macros: campaign, ad set, ad and placement IDs, and cost where the source supports it.
2. Tracker. It records the click, creates a unique click ID and sends the visitor on to your pre-lander or straight to the offer.
3. Offer link. The click ID travels in a sub-ID parameter of your affiliate link. The platform stores it next to the registration and the deposit.
4. Postback. When a registration, first deposit or qualification is confirmed, the platform’s server calls your tracker’s postback URL with the click ID, the event and the payout.
5. Optimisation. The tracker ties the event to the exact ad. If you also pass conversions back to the ad platform through its server-side conversion API, its algorithm learns from deposits instead of clicks.

Why server to server and not a browser pixel? A pixel needs the player’s browser to load your code on a confirmation page, which operators rarely allow and browsers increasingly block. A postback is fired by the platform’s server once the event is confirmed, so cookie settings and ad blockers do not decide what you see.

Sub-IDs: what to pass and what to log

Most platforms give you several sub-ID slots. Put the click ID in the same slot on every link, so postbacks never lose it. Use the other slots for source, campaign and creative, with the same names you use in the tracker. Never put personal data in a sub-ID: no emails, phone numbers or names. Sub-IDs travel through several systems and end up in reports other people read.

Test the whole chain before you spend. Ask your manager for a test postback, or use the platform’s postback test tool, and check that the event arrives with the right click ID. Registering through your own link is self-referral, not a test.

Then reconcile weekly, tracker against program statistics, on one timezone and the same event: “first deposit” and “qualified player” are different counts. More detail in our guide to S2S postbacks and attribution.

Intermediate · Chapter 2

Pre-landers and conversion rate optimisation

7 minutes

A pre-lander is the page between your ad and the offer. It has three jobs: keep the promise your ad made, set honest expectations about the offer, and send on the visitors who are likely to register and deposit. The last job is the one people forget. A page that pushes everyone forward raises your click-through rate and lowers your deposit rate, and the program only sees the second number.

Formats that work, and one rule for all of them

Common formats are the short article or advertorial, the comparison or review page, the quiz that ends in a recommendation, and the app-style page for mobile traffic. Whatever the format, it has to be true. Invented testimonials, fake news stories with famous faces and “guaranteed win” systems break ad policies and advertising codes, and they attract exactly the visitors who never deposit. Match the format to the source: story-style pages suit native ads, short app-style pages suit mobile social traffic, comparison pages suit search.

Measure the page by what happens after it

Track three rates for every pre-lander: click-through from the page to the offer, click to registration, and registration to first deposit. Judge a new version on cost per first deposit, not on click-through alone. If version B sends 30% more clicks but the same number of depositors, it is not better, it is just busier. (Example numbers.)

Speed is part of conversion. Load your page on a mid-range phone over mobile data, not on office wifi, and time how long it takes before the button is visible. Compress images, drop scripts you do not need and host the page close to the GEO. Every second before the first screen appears is a second in which the visitor can leave.

Change one element at a time and give each version enough traffic to judge; the next chapter shows how much is enough. Keep every version with its own pre-lander ID in the tracker, so the history of your page is a history of evidence, not of opinions.

Six levers to check on your own page

Tap each card to see how to check the lever and what to test first.

Intermediate · Chapter 3

Split testing without fooling yourself

8 minutes

Every buyer tests. Fewer buyers learn from their tests, because the test was set up so that almost any result could be read as a win. A structured split test fixes the rules before the money is spent.

Five rules for a clean test

1. One variable at a time. Creative, or pre-lander, or audience, or placement. Change two and you will never know which one worked.
2. One primary metric, chosen in advance. On CPA deals that is cost per qualified FTD. Click-through rate is a useful early signal, never the verdict.
3. Equal conditions. Same GEO, same schedule, same budget split, same period. Run at least a full week so weekdays and weekends both count.
4. A sample size you worked out before you started. See below.
5. A written stop rule, so a bad morning or a lucky evening does not make the decision for you.

Sample size basics

Small numbers lie. With 20 registrations per variant, a difference of a few registrations is noise. A common rule of thumb for the visitors each variant needs is 16 × p × (1 – p) ÷ d², where p is your current conversion rate and d is the smallest absolute difference you care about. It gives roughly 80% power at 5% significance. Example: your click to registration rate is 5% and you want to detect a lift to 6%, so d is 0.01. That is 16 × 0.05 × 0.95 ÷ 0.0001, about 7,600 visitors per variant. Detecting a lift to 5.5% instead needs four times as many.

First deposits are rarer than registrations, so a test judged on deposits needs far more traffic. A practical sequence: screen ideas on an early metric such as registration rate, then confirm the survivors on cost per FTD before you move budget.

When to kill a test

• A variant has spent your pre-set loss limit without results, for example two to three times your target cost per FTD with no first deposit. Set your own number before launch.
• Both variants reached the planned sample and the difference is not proven: keep the cheaper or simpler version and test a bigger idea.
• Never stop because one variant leads after a day. Checking daily and stopping at the first good-looking moment produces false winners.

Keep a test log: hypothesis, variable, dates, sample, result, decision. A team without one pays for the same failed test twice.

Intermediate · Chapter 4

Reading KPIs beyond CPA: FTD rate, deposit value, retention and cohorts

8 minutes

Cost per FTD tells you what a player cost. It says nothing about what that player is worth, and worth is how programs judge your traffic, set your caps and decide your next rate. Buyers who only watch CPA hear about a quality problem when commission is withheld.

The numbers behind the number

• FTD rate, registration to first deposit. A low rate points to curious rather than interested visitors, a promise the offer does not keep, or payment methods that do not work in the GEO.
• Average first deposit. Traffic that only ever deposits the minimum struggles to pass the baseline, and programs notice the pattern.
• Qualification rate. The share of FTDs that pass the baseline and the hold. This is where CPA becomes effective CPA.
• Retention signals. Redeposit rate within 7 and 30 days, deposits per player, active days. Many platforms do not show these to affiliates, so ask your manager for a quality report per sub-ID. The request alone shows you care about value.
• EPC and ROAS. Earnings per click compares offers and sources on one scale. ROAS, revenue divided by ad spend, shows what comes back for every euro out: 1.5 means €1.50 per €1.

The cohort view

A cohort is a group of players who made their first deposit in the same week or month. Instead of asking “how much did I earn in October?”, you ask “how much has the September group earned so far, and how does that compare with the August group at the same age?” Split cohorts by source, GEO and creative and you see what totals hide: a cheap source whose players stop after one deposit, or an expensive one whose players keep coming back. On RevShare the cohort view is your income forecast; on CPA it is your negotiating position.

Separate leading numbers from lagging ones. Click-through and registration rates move within hours and tell you what to adjust today. Qualification, redeposits and net revenue arrive weeks later and tell you what to scale. React with the first group, decide with the second.

Our guide to iGaming affiliate KPIs covers the daily routine in more detail.

Intermediate · Chapter 5

Negotiating deals and payout terms

7 minutes

The headline CPA is the least important line in a deal. Two offers with the same number can pay very differently once the terms are applied, and a lower CPA with better terms can pay more per player. Read, and negotiate, the terms first.

Terms that move your real payout

Where your leverage comes from

Volume matters, but quality evidence matters more: cohort data, redeposit rates, qualification rate and a clean record with no fraud flags. Consistency counts too. A partner who delivers steady numbers every week is easier to reward than one who spikes and disappears. Exclusivity for a GEO or a traffic source, or early traffic for a new brand launch, are other things you can put on the table.

How to ask

• Bring numbers, not adjectives. “Our March cohort redeposits more often than your GEO average” beats “our traffic is premium”. Ask your manager what that average is.
• Trade, do not demand: more volume for a higher CPA, a longer commitment for a shorter hold, exclusivity for a better baseline.
• Ask for one change at a time and propose a test period with a review date.
• Get every agreement in writing, by email or in a signed insertion order. A promise in a chat is a memory, not a term.

Red flags: qualification “at the program’s discretion” with no detail, no access to statistics, terms changed without notice, and any pressure to send traffic to markets the offer does not allow.

More tactics in our guide to negotiating iGaming affiliate deals.

Finished the Intermediate track? Continue with the Advanced track, starting with scaling.

Advanced · Chapter 1

Scaling without breaking a winning campaign

8 minutes

A campaign that works at €100 a day does not automatically work at €1,000 a day. Four things strain on the way up: the ad platform’s delivery, the audience, the creatives and your cash. Scaling means managing all four at once. (Example budgets.)

Vertical and horizontal scaling

Vertical scaling puts more budget on what already works. Large jumps can push delivery algorithms back into a learning phase and buy the most expensive impressions first, so raise budgets in steps and let each step settle before the next. A step of 15% to 30% every few days is a common starting point; your own data should set the final rule. Horizontal scaling copies the winner into new audiences, placements, ad accounts or GEOs with the same language. It adds volume without pushing one audience harder, but every copy is a new test and needs its own kill rule.

Signals that the campaign is starting to break

• Creative fatigue. Click-through rate falls week on week while frequency rises. The fix is new creatives, which is why the next scaling step starts in the creative pipeline, not in the budget field.
• Audience saturation. CPM rises and reach stops growing. Widen the audience, add placements or scale horizontally.
• Quality drift. Cost per FTD holds but the FTD rate or the qualification rate slips, because the extra volume came from weaker segments. Check by placement and device before the program checks for you.
• Caps. Players above the offer’s cap may not be paid at all. Know the cap before you double.

Cash is the real ceiling

Scaling multiplies spend weeks before it multiplies payouts. With a 30 day hold and monthly payments, for example, the money you spend in the first scaled month comes back in the second or third. Before the first step, work out the spend you have to carry until the first larger payout arrives, and keep a buffer on top.

Scale on a written rule, not on a good day. For example: cost per qualified FTD under target for five days in a row, with enough FTDs that one lucky player does not make the average.

Advanced · Chapter 2

Multi-GEO planning: compliance first, then payments and language

8 minutes

Adding a GEO looks like the easiest way to scale: same creatives, same funnel, new country. In practice a new GEO is a new business with its own law, payment habits, language and competition. The order of your checks matters, because the first one can end the project before you spend anything.

The order of checks

1. Legal status. Is online gambling licensed there, is advertising allowed, and through which channels? Some regulators also require affiliates to register or be approved before promoting. Note the source and the date you checked.
2. Ad platform policy. Every platform keeps its own list of countries and certifications for gambling ads, often stricter than the law.
3. Offers and terms. Which licensed operators accept the GEO, and which baseline, hold and cap apply there? Terms often differ by country inside the same program.
4. Payments. Which deposit methods do people actually use, and does the offer support them? A strong funnel with the wrong payment methods ends at the deposit page.
5. Language and culture. Native copy, local currency, the local sports calendar, public holidays and pay days.
6. Devices and connection. Mobile share, common phone models and data costs decide how heavy your pre-lander can be.

Why a winner in one GEO fails in another

The creative that won in one market was tuned to that market’s audience, competitors and ad review. Move it and all three change. The angle may not translate: humour, sports references and even colours read differently. Ad review may reject a creative that passed elsewhere. Click costs and competition differ. The payment step can add friction your first market never had, and the baseline can be stricter. Port the hypothesis, not the asset: take the angle that worked, rebuild the creative and the pre-lander locally, and test it with a fresh budget and fresh kill rules.

Start with GEOs that share a language, a payment infrastructure or a regulator with a market you already know. Keep one GEO sheet per country: legal status with source and date, allowed channels, offers and terms, payment methods, language notes. Markets can close overnight, so the sheet is a living document, not a one-off check. Market overviews: best GEOs for iGaming affiliates and compliance by country.

Tap each card: six questions to answer before a winning campaign crosses a border.

Advanced · Chapter 3

LTV maths at scale: RevShare vs CPA and the break-even month

9 minutes

At small volume, choosing between CPA and RevShare is mostly about cash flow. At scale it becomes a question about lifetime value: what one cohort of players will pay you over its life, how fast, and with how much uncertainty.

The cohort revenue curve

Take every player who made a first deposit in one month. Their combined net gaming revenue is usually highest in the first months and falls as players stop playing. Your RevShare income from that cohort follows the same curve, multiplied by your percentage and reduced by any deductions and carryover. Add the months together and you get the cohort’s lifetime value to you. Compare it with what you spent to acquire the cohort and you get the break-even month: the month in which cumulative RevShare income covers the ad spend.

CPA is simpler. You are paid once, after the hold, and the shape of the curve is the operator’s problem. RevShare hands you the whole curve but makes you wait for it. Hybrid sits in between.

What decides the maths

• Retention. Try it in the calculator: a few points more in the share of players who stay each month can move lifetime value more than a similar change in first-month revenue.
• Volume. In a small cohort one big winner can wipe out a month, and negative carryover pushes that loss into the next. Bigger cohorts smooth the variance, which is why RevShare suits scale better than it suits a test.
• Cash. You fund acquisition today and collect over many months. Scaling on RevShare means financing a growing book of players until early cohorts pay for new ones.
• The tail. A market can close; an operator can change terms or leave a GEO. A sensible habit is to judge deals on a fixed horizon, such as 12 months, and treat anything later as a bonus.

Use the calculator the other way round too. Enter the cost per FTD you can actually buy at and read how long the RevShare book needs to pay for itself. If the break-even month comes later than your cash can carry, take CPA or Hybrid now and move volume to RevShare once earlier cohorts fund the next ones.

For worked examples with smaller numbers, see CPA vs RevShare vs Hybrid.

Advanced · Chapter 4

A creative testing system and a team workflow that scales

8 minutes

Past a certain budget the bottleneck stops being money. It becomes the number of good creatives you can produce and test each week, and how fast the team decides what to kill and what to scale. Both are systems, not talent.

Angles, concepts, variations

Organise creative work in three layers. An angle is the core reason to click: the local league season, a product feature, the mobile experience. A concept is one execution of that angle: a short video, a static image, a carousel. A variation changes one element of a concept: the hook, the first seconds, the headline, the colour. Test angles first, because they move results the most, then concepts, then variations. Every angle still follows the rules from the Beginner track: no promises of winnings, no “free money”.

A weekly testing rhythm

• A fixed testing budget in its own campaign, separate from scaling campaigns, so tests never steal from winners and winners never starve tests.
• A new batch of concepts on the same day every week, each with a test ID, a hypothesis and a kill rule.
• Winners graduate to scaling campaigns; losers go to the archive with a note on why they lost. The archive is how you stop testing the same idea twice.

Roles, even in a team of two

Name who decides what. The media buyer launches, sets budgets and makes kill and scale calls. The creative producer turns briefs into assets. The tech or analyst role owns the tracker, postbacks, reports and reconciliation. The lead chooses GEOs and offers, negotiates terms and owns risk. One person can hold several roles; what breaks teams is two people each thinking the other one decided.

Names everyone can read

Use one naming convention for campaigns, ads, creatives and sub-IDs, so a line in a report explains itself without a meeting. A good pattern puts the fields in a fixed order: date, source, GEO, offer, angle, format, version. Build yours below.

Reporting cadence

Advanced · Chapter 5

Risk management: account bans, quality disputes and market closures

8 minutes

A weak creative costs you a week. Three other events can cost you the business: losing your ad accounts, losing commission in a quality dispute, and losing a market overnight. None of them can be fully prevented. All of them can be made survivable if you prepare before they happen.

Account bans

Gambling is a restricted category on every major ad platform. Work only with the certifications, countries and formats each platform allows, keep records of your approvals, and treat policy updates as part of the job. Never use cloaking, which means showing ad reviewers a different page from the one real users see. It is a direct policy violation that platforms treat as deception; it leads to permanent bans that can reach linked accounts, payment methods and business profiles, and programs withhold commission for it. SOHO does not use it. Spread the risk instead: more than one traffic source, backups of creatives, audiences and tracker settings, and a plan for what runs while a disabled account is under appeal.

Traffic quality disputes

A program may flag part of your traffic as fraud or low quality: bots, incentivised sign-ups, duplicate accounts or bonus abuse. Prevention is cheaper than the dispute. Block placements that never deposit, watch redeposit and qualification rates by sub-ID, and act on your manager’s feedback the same week. When a dispute happens, ask in writing for player-level reasons, compare them with your click logs, fix the source and agree what happens to the withheld commission. Your click-level data from the Intermediate track is your evidence.

Market closures

Regulation can close a market faster than any campaign can adapt. On 25 September 2026 Brazil banned fixed-odds betting and its advertising, and affiliates who depended on that market lost it within days, together with the future RevShare income from players there (what the ban means for affiliates). Set your own limit on how much revenue may come from one GEO, one operator and one traffic source, follow regulatory news for every market you promote in, and keep a plan B GEO with offers already tested. When a market closes, stop the traffic at once: promoting there after a ban is not a grey area.

Reference · all levels

Glossary: the words you will hear, from day one to scaling

Reference

Affiliate

A partner who sends players to an operator and is paid for results.

Media buying

Buying ad traffic and sending it to offers, aiming to earn more than you spend.

Traffic arbitrage

Another name for media buying: profit is the gap between ad cost and commission.

Offer

A specific brand in a specific market with a payout model and terms.

GEO

The country or market you target. Written as two letter codes, such as DE or GB.

FTD

First time deposit: a new player’s first payment. The core event in most deals.

Baseline

The minimum a player must do, such as a deposit above a set amount, to trigger CPA.

CPA

Cost per acquisition: a fixed fee per qualified player, paid once.

RevShare

A percentage of the net revenue your players generate, paid every period.

Hybrid

A smaller CPA plus a smaller RevShare on the same players.

GGR

Gross gaming revenue: what players staked minus what they won.

NGR

Net gaming revenue: GGR minus bonuses, fees and taxes. RevShare is usually paid on this.

Negative carryover

A negative month rolls into the next and must be earned back first.

Hold period

The period a program keeps commission before paying, to catch fraud and chargebacks.

Cap

The maximum number of players a program pays for in a period.

CR

Conversion rate: the share of people who take the next step.

EPC

Earnings per click: commission divided by clicks.

ROI

Return on investment: profit divided by what you spent.

Postback

A server to server message that reports an event to your tracker.

Sub-ID

Your own label on a tracking link, such as the click ID, ad or placement name, returned to you in reports and postbacks.

Pre-lander

A page between the ad and the offer that warms up the visitor.

Creative

The ad itself: image, video, text or banner.

Brand bidding

Buying search ads on an operator’s brand name. Usually banned.

Incentivised traffic

Rewarding people for registering or depositing. Banned almost everywhere.

KYC

Know your customer: identity checks an operator runs on players.

Media buying team

Buyers working together with shared tools, creatives, accounts and budgets.

Click ID

A unique ID your tracker gives each click. It travels in a sub-ID and comes back in the postback.

Click tracker

Your own system that records clicks, routes visitors and receives postbacks, so you see results per ad.

S2S

Server to server: the platform’s server reports events to your tracker, with no browser involved.

FTD rate

The share of registrations that make a first deposit.

Redeposit rate

The share of depositing players who deposit again within a set period. A key retention signal.

Cohort

A group of players who made their first deposit in the same period, followed over time.

LTV

Lifetime value: what a player or a cohort earns you over the whole relationship.

Break-even month

The month in which cumulative income from a cohort covers what you spent to acquire it.

ROAS

Return on ad spend: revenue divided by ad spend. 1.5 means €1.50 back for every €1.

Split test

Two versions that differ in one element, run under the same conditions, to see which performs better.

Statistical significance

How unlikely it is that a difference in a test is just noise. The usual bar is 95% confidence.

Creative fatigue

An audience has seen an ad too often: click-through falls while frequency and costs rise.

Audience saturation

A campaign has reached most of its audience, so extra budget buys pricier, weaker impressions.

Admin fee

A deduction some programs take from net revenue before calculating RevShare.

Cloaking

Showing ad reviewers a different page from the one users see. A policy violation that gets accounts banned; SOHO does not use it.

No term matches. Try a shorter word.

Frequently asked questions