Traffic approval is an advertiser's assessment of whether an affiliate's traffic, taken as a whole, meets the programme's rules — allowed sources, allowed GEOs, permitted creative approaches, and acceptable player behaviour — either before a campaign is allowed to scale or on a rolling basis as it runs.
Definition
Traffic approval is an advertiser's assessment of whether an affiliate's traffic, taken as a whole, meets the programme's rules — allowed sources, allowed GEOs, permitted creative approaches, and acceptable player behaviour — either before a campaign is allowed to scale or on a rolling basis as it runs. Where lead approval is a verdict on individual conversions, traffic approval is a verdict on the source: is this affiliate's traffic, in aggregate, the kind the advertiser wants to keep paying for.
The assessment is usually based on early-cohort quality rather than a single metric. An advertiser looks at the deposit-to-registration ratio, the bonus-abuse rate, day-7 and day-30 retention, average deposit size, chargeback rate, and whether the geographic and device mix of the players matches what the affiliate disclosed.
A clean test batch that then diverges sharply once the affiliate scales is a common trigger for a traffic-approval problem.
In context
Affiliates reduce traffic-approval risk by disclosing their sources honestly, matching creatives to the offer rather than baiting with an unrelated hook, sending a clean test batch before scaling, and holding the same mix at scale as in the test. Most disputes over traffic approval turn on whether the rules were specified clearly and in writing beforehand: an advertiser that rejects traffic for using a source it never explicitly disallowed, or applies an unstated quality threshold, is effectively changing the deal after the fact.
For the advertiser, traffic approval is a risk-control step that protects margin, keeps bonus abuse and chargebacks within acceptable limits, and stops a new brand's onboarding capacity from being overwhelmed by low-quality volume. A well-run programme communicates the standards up front, gives feedback when a source is borderline rather than silently rejecting, and reserves outright termination for clear, documented breaches.
From the affiliate's side, understanding exactly what will be measured and what the thresholds are is essential before committing budget to a scale-up.
Worked example
An advertiser rejects an affiliate's scaled batch after finding that 30% of registrations came from a GEO not on the offer's allowed list — traffic that had been under 5% in the clean test batch. Because the allowed-GEO list was specified in writing, the rejection stands; the affiliate tightens geo-targeting, excludes VPN ranges, and resubmits a compliant batch.
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