Business & Payments
Hold
A delay before a conversion is validated and paid — the window used to filter fraud.
Hold is the validation period between a conversion being recorded and its payout being confirmed and released — typically one to four weeks depending on the network and vertical. During the hold, the advertiser reviews traffic quality, filters fraud, waits out chargeback and cancellation windows, and only then approves the conversions for payment.
Hold is the silent cash-flow killer for scaling teams: you finance ad spend today against revenue confirmed weeks from now, so the real constraint on growth is often working capital, not campaign performance. Established affiliates negotiate shorter holds or early payments once trust builds; networks shorten holds for clean, proven traffic. Budget for the worst case — money in hold is not money, and conversions can still be rejected inside it.
In buyer speech
“We've got $40k sitting in hold until the 15th, so either the network fronts an early payment or we throttle spend this week.”