Fraud & Compliance
Shaving
An advertiser or network under-reporting conversions to reduce payout owed to affiliates.
Shaving is when an advertiser or network deliberately under-reports conversions so they pay affiliates less than what was actually earned. Unlike a technical tracking loss, shaving is intentional: a percentage of valid leads, deposits, or sales simply never appear in the affiliate's stats, while the advertiser still keeps and monetizes those customers. It's one of the oldest disputes in the affiliate business.
Buyers detect shaving by comparing click-to-conversion rates across offers and networks: if the same traffic converts at 8% on one advertiser and 4% on a mirror offer, someone is trimming. Split-testing traffic between two networks running the same offer is the standard audit. The economics matter — even 10-15% shaving can flip a profitable campaign negative, so experienced buyers test payout integrity before scaling spend on any new advertiser.
In buyer speech
“CR on this advertiser dropped exactly when we scaled — split 20% of traffic to the backup network and let's check if they're shaving us.”