A KPI is the number someone uses to judge whether something is working. On an affiliate offer, the KPIs are the advertiser’s quality targets for your traffic, such as how many users are still active after a week or how many leads become customers. Hit them and the offer stays open and may pay more; miss them and the payout drops or access closes.
A key performance indicator (KPI) is a metric chosen to measure progress toward a goal. In affiliate offers the term has a specific use: the KPIs listed on an offer are the quality thresholds the advertiser will judge each traffic source against, beyond the conversion it pays for. Typical examples are day-1 or day-7 retention for app installs, registration-to-deposit rate for finance, approval or contact rate for leads, refund and chargeback rates for card offers, and ROAS for e-commerce. An offer might pay a CPI on install but require “D7 retention of at least 15%”.
KPIs exist because the paid event is a proxy. The advertiser pays on an install, a lead or a first purchase because it can be measured quickly, but its business depends on what happens next. The KPI connects the two: it tells the affiliate what downstream behaviour the payout assumes, and it gives the advertiser a contractual basis to reduce payouts, decline conversions or close access for sources that deliver the paid event without the value behind it.
On the affiliate’s own side, KPIs are the handful of numbers that decide decisions: EPC, CPC, conversion rate, approval rate, ROI and cash-flow timing for a campaign; CTR and hook rate for creatives; placement-level EPC for optimisation. Choosing few, well-defined KPIs and tracking them by source is what turns a dashboard into a decision tool; tracking everything equally is how teams miss the one number that moved.
A good KPI is defined precisely: the event, the base, the window and the threshold (“deposits within 7 days divided by registrations, at least 20%, measured per sub-ID”). Offer KPIs that are vague (“quality traffic”) are worth clarifying with the account manager before launch, because they are the terms you will be judged on after the money is spent.
A finance app pays a 22 USD CPA per verified registration and lists a KPI: at least 20% of registrations must make a first deposit within 7 days. You run three sources in the same week.
| Source | Registrations | Deposits in 7 days | Deposit rate | KPI met? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search | 180 | 58 | 32% | yes |
| Native advertorial | 420 | 92 | 22% | yes |
| Push | 650 | 59 | 9% | no |
| Account total | 1,250 | 209 | 16.7% | no |
The account as a whole misses the KPI only because of push. If the affiliate reports by sub-ID and pauses push, the account average rises to 25%, the advertiser keeps the offer open and the search source becomes the basis for a payout bump. Reported only as an account total, the same data would have got the affiliate a payout cut on all traffic. Numbers are illustrative.
Every field on an offer page — payout, cap, GEO, flow, KPIs, hold — decides how you get paid or get burned.
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Quality targets the advertiser applies to each traffic source beyond the paid event, such as retention rate, deposit rate, approval rate or refund rate. They decide whether payouts are kept, reduced or the source is closed.
Usually a warning first, then a lower payout, declined conversions or closed access for that source. Clear per-source reporting lets you pause the weak source before the whole account is affected.
For each campaign: EPC, cost per click, conversion rate, approval rate, ROI and payout timing. For creatives: CTR and, on video, hook rate. For optimisation: the same numbers per placement.
With the event, the base, the time window and the threshold, measured at a stated level such as sub-ID. For example: first deposits within 7 days divided by registrations, at least 20%, per sub-ID.
References are listed as plain text on purpose; look them up by title and publisher. Updated: 2026-10-06.
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