Detecting when Affiliate Programs Shave

John Wright: So I got a hot topic on shaving, and whenever I'm talking to people, I'm always talking about. The frameworks for detecting it and what does that look like? It can look like a lot of things, but I want to talk about one that is super easy for anyone to do. Quick analysis on their own data. And it's, it's almost so easy that I can't believe more people aren't spotting it.

And I think there's gonna be a wave of activity in the next, uh, six months where affiliates start looking through this data and realize, wait a minute, there's some pretty bad stuff going on here. So I had a, a quick convo, a couple emails last week with one of our Staffone customers, and they noticed that an FTD appeared in Staffone but wasn't showing up in the reports.

So they started digging around and I'll, I'll list the software. The software was income access, but I won't name the program yet because, um, uh, yeah, it get, it gets pretty controversial when you start outing these companies, but I know everyone wants to hear which companies are responsible for it. Um, so to make a long story, story short.

This affiliate noticed that they had net, uh, gaming revenue or net, uh, revenue activity happening. There's deposits, there's wagering money being made, but when it came to the RS comm or the Revenue Share Commission, it was zero, and it was in two of the different reports. It was in the asset report, and it was in the campaign report.

Uh, you cannot hide from this. So sure enough, the affiliate went back to their affiliate manager and said, what is going on here? We never, ever agreed at 0%, uh, commission. Apparently they had a deal in place. It was, I think it might have been 40%, but sure enough, the deal was zero. And the affiliate manager basically blamed the software, which is impossible, and it's not true at all.

Um, it's caused some tension in that. Relationship. Um, I'm personally wondering if that affiliate program is actually doing this to a lot of other people. So I'm now kind of working in the background going, can I contact some other affiliates that may be working with, uh, this affiliate program and to see if they're experiencing anything similar where you have.

Net revenue, but you have your rev share comp to to be zero. So all you need to do in a basic report is you can use that shown, download your data, you get it as a CSV file, and the first thing you do, you're going through the campaign analysis in particular. You're like, find me all campaigns where there's positive net rev.

Um, but is zero for Rev Share com or rs com. You could even do the same when it comes to CPA. Um, but for the most part, we're really interested in the rev share com. If you find that then there's something wrong going on, it means that you have a 0% deal attached to your account, or there's simply no deal assigned to it.

That's just lost revenue. There's no excuse for it. And I know some field programs like to make up reasons why that might be happening. They might even say it's your fault, but it doesn't matter. You're sending players, you're sending traffic, you've got tracking links. We always expect a deal to be associated with it.

We never expect to have to. Look up, you know, does a deal even exist? And I won't mention the software, another software platform that does it, but there's one that's notorious for it, where quite often you can sign up, get approved to join the affiliate program, but you do not have a deal in place. So the second you get your tracking links, you put them on your website, you start sending traffic, you're gonna get no commission for it.

And then the field manager. A month later says, well, that was your fault because we didn't have a deal sign. Um, it's kind of very convenient. Anyways, very quick exercise you can do. I'm just gonna summarize it one more time, whether it's Danone or, you know, you can even try this with I think, maybe Phoenix and Rowdy.

Look at your campaigns, look at your dynamic variables. Just do a very quick analysis. Find all your campaigns or all your click IDs. Where there is positive net revenue, but there is zero for rev share comp. That's all you need to do. Get the list, organize it by the highest amount. And I can tell you right now, I'm looking through a couple accounts right now.

I, I mean, I'm seeing things as high as like. $45,000 in deposits. No rep share. I mean, this is just a crime. So, uh, good luck out there. Um, hopefully this causes a couple affiliates to look through their data and I'm pretty sure we're gonna get some, uh, grumbling comments happening on social media the next six months once we start finding which programs are a little too consistent in doing these things.