Optimizing your FTD tool toward deposits instead of retained value

Optimizing your FTD tool toward deposits instead of retained value

FTD optimization tools let you bid and route toward first deposits. The mistake: making the first deposit the goal, when the broker pays you on what survives.

The trap:
— On revenue-share or hybrid deals, a flood of $10 minimum-deposit FTDs looks like a winning campaign and earns you almost nothing — most never re-fund.
— Your optimizer keeps scaling the cheap-FTD source because its objective is deposit count, blind to second-deposit and 90-day net.

The fix:
— Feed the optimizer a downstream signal: 2nd-deposit rate or D30 net revenue, not just FTD. Most platforms accept a custom conversion event for this — wire it up.
— Set a minimum-deposit floor per source. A source that only produces sub-$50 FTDs gets capped or cut regardless of volume.
— On hybrid deals, weight the CPA portion against the expected rev-share tail per source, not in aggregate.

Who should skip this: pure CPA-flat where every FTD pays the same fixed amount — there, deposit count genuinely is the goal.

Verdict: Optimize for retained, not first.