Q: A new offer scrubbed our first week hard — was that normal, and how did it resolve?

Q: A new offer scrubbed our first week hard — was that normal, and how did it resolve?

A: Yes, heavy early scrubbing on a brand-new affiliate is common, and it's often a trust mechanism, not theft. One team panicked at it and nearly quit a good offer. Here's what actually happened.

Week one on a new offer, their accepted-conversion rate sat at 61% of what they tracked. They assumed the network was robbing them and almost pulled the campaign.

Instead they asked the manager directly and got an honest answer: new affiliates start on conservative antifraud settings until a baseline of clean traffic is established. The team kept sending the same clean traffic and logged the acceptance week by week:
— Week 1: 61% accepted
— Week 2: 74%
— Week 4: 89%
— Week 6: 93% and stable

Nothing about their traffic changed — the network simply loosened the filters as trust built.

The takeaway: a rough first week isn't proof of a bad deal. Ask the manager whether you're in a warm-up period before you walk.

Short version: heavy early scrubbing is often a trust warm-up; clean traffic over a few weeks usually lifts acceptance into the 90s — ask before quitting.

Still stuck? Drop your case in the comments.