Scrub
Scrub is the practice where an advertiser, after manual or automated review, rejects (declines to pay for) some of the conversions an affiliate already sees in their tracker, over suspected fraud, an unredeemed COD order, failed KYC, or a mismatch with the offer's terms. Because of scrub, the number of paid conversions is almost always lower than the number tracked.
Why advertisers scrub conversions
Some scrub is legitimate protection against real fraud: bots, click injection, self-conversions, and in that sense it's fair; but scrub without a clear basis also happens, sometimes used by an advertiser to quietly shrink the final payout. Statistics help tell the two apart: a steady 5-10% scrub rate is usually explained by traffic quality, while spikes to 40-50% with no explanation are a sign to switch offers or push the network's manager for reasons.
How to cut scrub on PWA traffic
The main driver of high scrub is dirty traffic — bots, emulators, datacenter IPs, repeat clicks from the same device — exactly the kind of conversions that get voided most often on review. APEX's antibot/cloaking filters that traffic out before it ever reaches the offer, which shrinks the share of conversions that were always going to get scrubbed and makes the gap between tracker numbers and advertiser numbers smaller and more predictable.
FAQ
- Is scrub always the advertiser cheating the affiliate?
- No, some scrub is justified — voiding genuinely fraudulent or invalid traffic; the problem starts when scrub runs abnormally high with no clear explanation from the advertiser.
- How do you tell if an offer is scrubbing too hard?
- Compare your own tracker numbers against the network's paid conversions for the same period: if the gap is consistently much wider than on comparable offers, ask the manager for reasons and logs on the rejected conversions.
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