Rules you can read, and work you can check.
The most common way a partner loses money is not a bad campaign. It is a cookie window quietly shortened last month. Here a rule is a version: it has a publication date, an effective date and a recorded reason, and a version cannot begin before it was published — the database refuses. On top of that we re-derive attribution from a sample and publish the times we got it wrong.
Before the rules: does the click record at all
A tracking link whose address has lost its own ref still works, still opens the right page, and pays nobody. Nothing surfaces it before payout, and the partner never complains — they assume the content failed. The database no longer lets such a row go live, and the check below separates the two different stories behind a zero.
No findings. Every live link carries its own ref, and the zero-click ones are explained by activation.
These are published, not attached to an email
A programme can carry its own rules: a ninety-day buying cycle and a three-day one cannot share a window without one of them being wrong.
We re-derive attribution and say what we found
Each row is a sample of sales re-derived under the published rules. A row with misses has to name them — the database will not accept an audit that reports errors without itemising them.
Four things that stay out
We do not change a rule retroactively. The effective date cannot precede the publication date — a constraint prevents it, not a guideline.
We do not change a rule quietly. Publication notifies every partner in the workspace, and the change must carry a written reason.
We do not claim to track what we cannot. A device switch without a sign-in is missed, it shows in the audits, and we say so.
We do not publish only the clean audits. The worst sample is at the top of this page as its own number.