Rebuilding affiliate hygiene for a LATAM marketplace.

The client is a Tier-1 LATAM marketplace, two-sided, ~12M MAU, with a four-year-old affiliate program operated through a third-party network. By the time we were called in, gross affiliate revenue had grown 40% year-over-year for two consecutive years — but blended CAC had risen, organic search demand had flattened, and the head of growth could no longer reconcile the numbers between the affiliate dashboard, GA4 and the data warehouse.

What we found

1. 01

   Last-touch attribution was rewarding the partner that fired the final cookie, regardless of whether the user was already mid-funnel from paid search the same day.

2. 02

   Three partners had quietly built browser-extension cashback tools that activated on checkout pages, claiming credit from sessions they had not originated.

3. 03

   Bonus tiers stacked: a partner who hit 'gold' could double-claim on referrals from a sub-tier, creating an incentive to onboard fake sub-affiliates.

4. 04

   The third-party network's postbacks fired client-side. ITP and ad-blockers caused 18% of legitimate conversions to register late or not at all.

What we rebuilt

1. 01

   Server-side postbacks via a thin internal collector. Every partner submission resolves a deterministic ID against the warehouse before crediting.

2. 02

   An incrementality test rotation — 50/50 holdouts on a rolling 4-week basis — to separate compounding partners from those harvesting demand.

3. 03

   Tier rules rewritten: payout is a function of incremental contribution, not gross referrals. Bonuses are flat at ceiling, not stacked.

4. 04

   A weekly partner letter (not a dashboard) that explains the reading. Three partners renegotiated; two left voluntarily.