Quick answer
A qualified FTD is a first-time depositor who meets the acquisition conditions in the applicable affiliate agreement. A deposit event alone does not establish an earned CPA. Define identity, attribution, eligible market, required checks, thresholds, time limits and approval status before launch, then report observed deposits and approved payable acquisitions as separate measures.
Affiliate operations and finance managers agreeing the event that triggers CPA payment.
Write a definition that can be tested
Replace “pay per FTD” with a written rule that another person can evaluate from permitted records. Identify the legal entity, brand, product and definition of a new customer. Ask whether an existing account on another brand changes eligibility. Record the attribution method and window separately from the time allowed to satisfy qualification conditions.
TheAffiliatePlatform documentation illustrates that deal conditions can be configured, so a dashboard label does not prove identical rules across accounts. Our editorial recommendation is to turn the signed definition into acceptance cases before traffic starts. Include a valid event, a duplicate, an out-of-window event and a pending case. Each should have an expected status and a documented reason.
References: TheAffiliatePlatform — Managing Deals
Keep event, review and payment states separate
Use an operational sequence such as observed, pending review, approved, rejected and reversed. These are proposed reporting states, not universal industry standards. Observed means the system received the event. Pending means the necessary assessment is incomplete. Approved means the relevant requirements have been satisfied under the agreement; payment may still depend on invoicing or a minimum balance.
A reversal should refer to the previous approval and explain what changed. Do not overwrite the event as if it never existed. That destroys the history needed to reconcile two reports captured on different dates. Keep event time, ingestion time and decision time so a delayed update can be distinguished from an actual disagreement about eligibility.
Reconcile a synthetic qualification funnel
Synthetic example: a campaign records 120 first-deposit events. Five are duplicate event deliveries, leaving 115 unique observed first depositors. At the reporting cutoff, eighty are approved, twenty are pending and fifteen are rejected. The payable count is eighty if the contract pays only approved acquisitions. Neither 120 nor 115 is an acceptable substitute for that approved count.
The approval share of unique observed first depositors is 80 divided by 115, or approximately 69.6%. It is a provisional operational measure while twenty cases remain open. Label the cutoff date and do not compare it with another campaign whose review period has finished. The worksheet makes each state visible instead of hiding pending cases inside a conversion percentage.
| Synthetic reporting state | Count | Treatment |
|---|---|---|
| Raw events | 120 | Deduplicate |
| Unique observed FTDs | 115 | Funnel denominator |
| Approved | 80 | Payable before cap checks |
| Pending | 20 | Review separately |
| Rejected | 15 | Retain reason |
Specify thresholds without encouraging player behavior
Qualification requirements may involve contractual deposit thresholds, identity checks, timing or other permitted conditions. Managers should document and test those conditions internally. Do not translate them into instructions pressuring people to deposit more, continue gambling or bypass verification. Commercial eligibility and responsible marketing are separate obligations that must both be respected.
The Spanish regulator-hosted affiliate study describes remuneration linked to advertiser conditions, supporting the need to distinguish an event from a payable acquisition. It does not establish today's requirements for a specific country or program. Have the responsible compliance team approve the market, channel and customer-facing message; a Spanish translation of a definition does not make an offer permissible throughout Spanish-speaking markets.
References: DGOJ — Documento sobre remuneración de afiliados
Make rejection reasons useful and privacy-conscious
Agree a controlled reason dictionary such as duplicate record, existing customer, ineligible market, attribution failure, threshold not met, review incomplete and confirmed invalid activity. These are proposed internal categories. Pending is not a rejection reason, and suspected issues should not automatically be represented as confirmed fraud in partner reporting.
Give managers enough evidence to investigate without distributing customer identity documents or unnecessary personal information. Prefer restricted exports with pseudonymous references and an escalation route for authorized reviewers. Record who can change a status and whether the change affects a closed statement. This lets the commercial team challenge a calculation while leaving sensitive verification decisions with the team responsible for them.
Agree the cutoff and dispute workflow
Before launch, decide which report is authoritative, when a month's cases close, what happens to unresolved reviews and how later reversals appear. Document any cap independently: a qualified acquisition can still fall outside a payable cap. Combining cap exclusions with qualification rejections makes the underlying traffic look worse and conceals an avoidable commercial limit.
At each close, reconcile opening pending cases, new events, approvals, rejections and closing pending cases. Assign an owner and next review date to every unresolved category. Use the cost-per-qualified-FTD tool only after the denominator is settled. A low cost per raw deposit can coexist with an expensive approved acquisition, so renewals should use the agreed payable population and disclose remaining uncertainty.
What is your qualified cost per FTD?
Use your own assumptions. Calculations stay in your browser; nothing is submitted.
Complete the required fields to see your result.
Approved = raw − rejected − pending. Cost per approved FTD = total cost ÷ approved FTDs. Rejected and pending must be mutually exclusive; pending is not rejected. Approval share uses all raw FTDs as the denominator and is provisional until validation closes.
Working template
| Control or input | Value or evidence | Responsible owner |
|---|---|---|
| Brand and definition of new customer | — | Commercial |
| Attribution window and rule | — | Tracking owner |
| Qualification thresholds and deadline | — | Commercial |
| Observed unique first depositors | — | Analytics |
| Approved at cutoff | — | Finance |
Frequently asked questions
Does FTD always mean an approved CPA?
No. FTD describes a first-deposit event or depositor, depending on the report. A payable CPA depends on the agreement and final qualification status. Ask for the exact field definition.
Should pending cases count as failures?
Keep them separate. Report the approved count at a dated cutoff and the unresolved population. Reclassifying every pending case as rejected understates eventual qualification and confuses review delays with traffic quality.
What if two dashboards disagree?
Compare unique references, event times, status decision times and report cutoffs. Then check attribution and contract versions. Escalate specific unmatched records through an approved process instead of sharing unnecessary customer data.
Sources and scope
Sources checked September 22, 2026. Numerical examples are illustrative unless explicitly identified otherwise.
- TheAffiliatePlatform — Managing Deals — Vendor documentation illustrating configurable commercial deal conditions. Checked September 22, 2026.
- DGOJ — Documento sobre remuneración de afiliados — Spanish regulator-hosted study describing affiliate remuneration terminology; not a current legal authorization. Checked September 22, 2026.
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