Bonus hunters carry negative NGR — but they're not your problem

Bonus hunters carry negative NGR — but they're not your problem

The advice: filter out bonus hunters, they're worthless traffic. Half true, half a category error.

The data, ~12 tracked welcome-offer cohorts:
— Pure bonus-abusers (deposit min, clear wagering, withdraw) post NGR around -$15 to -$30 per head. Genuinely value-destructive.
— But they're ~8-12% of a typical welcome cohort, and operators bear the loss on RevShare deals via the bonus-cost deduction in NGR.
— On CPA, the operator's qualification gate already screens most of them out before you get paid.

The correction: don't burn budget building anti-bonus-hunter filters on the affiliate side — that's the operator's risk to price. Your job is the opposite: avoid sources that only produce hunters (incentive/cashback traffic), because they tank your qualification rate and your RevShare cohort average.

▸ The real tell isn't "hunters present" — it's the ratio. Above ~25% hunters in a cohort, that source poisons your deal terms at the next renegotiation.

Benchmark of the day: bonus hunters run roughly -$20 NGR each; the metric that matters is their share of your cohort, not their existence.