Shaving — is the deliberate underreporting of the actual number of conversions by an advertiser or affiliate program in order to reduce the webmaster’s payout.
Simply put: a lead or deposit was completed and met all the offer requirements, but in the tracker or affiliate program statistics it appeared as «rejected» (trash, duplicate) or was not recorded at all.
How shaving works in practice
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Cutting deposits (gambling / betting): a player followed the webmaster’s link, registered, and made a deposit. The casino accepts the payment but marks the player as not meeting the offer conditions for the webmaster.
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Rejecting orders (nutra / e-commerce): the call center calls the customer, successfully closes the sale, and ships the product, but sets the status in the affiliate program to «rejected» or «no answer».
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Direct postback cutting: the affiliate network configures the system so that only a certain percentage of confirmed conversions is sent to the buyer (for example, 8 out of 10), while keeping the difference for itself.
Shaving or a technical issue?
Not every lost conversion — is fraud. Sometimes leads disappear for technical or policy-related reasons:
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Postback failure: a technical error in the tracker, pixel, or API settings.
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Violation of offer KPIs: the player did not meet the minimum baseline, made a deposit from a prohibited traffic source, or did not verify their phone number.
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Cookie loss: the user clicked the ad but completed the action several days later from another browser or device.
How a media buyer can detect shaving
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Test orders and deposits: regularly checking the setup yourself (making a test deposit or test order through a proxy or a friend while recording the time and data).
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Split tests: simultaneously running the same offer through two different affiliate networks or splitting several direct advertisers using the same traffic.
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Abnormal drop in approval rate: a sharp decline in the confirmation rate while traffic quality and creatives remain stable.
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Statistical discrepancy: the same traffic generates stable deposits with other affiliate programs, while the statistics here suddenly drop.
