What is Traffic Shaving?

Traffic shaving is an operator or network reporting fewer conversions, or less revenue per conversion, than an affiliate actually delivered. It is the oldest accusation in performance marketing and it survives because of a structural fact: the affiliate sends the click, and the advertiser counts the result. Only one party holds the ledger. It takes several forms. Signups can be dropped so that a player who registered never appears in the affiliate's report. Revenue can be understated by widening the deductions that turn gross gaming revenue into net. A player can be reassigned to another source, or to the operator's own direct channel, on the grounds that a later touch overrode the affiliate's cookie. None of these look like fraud from the outside; each looks like a slightly different accounting choice. An affiliate cannot audit the operator's database, so detection is statistical rather than forensic. The usual method is to compare conversion rates across programmes for traffic from the same pages: if one operator converts a third as well as its peers on identical placements, something is being counted differently. Sending a test registration and checking whether it appears is the only direct test available, and it works exactly once per operator. The defences are contractual rather than technical. Postback and click identifier data give the affiliate its own record of what it sent, a right-to-audit clause turns a suspicion into a question somebody has to answer, and reputation does the rest: the programmes that have been credibly accused tend to stay accused.