Compliance & regulatory
Lead scrub / scrubbing
Network-side filtering of low-quality leads before payout.
'Scrubbing' is the post-conversion filter networks (or advertisers) apply before paying out: dedupe checks, phone-number reachability tests, geo-mismatch flags, repeat-source patterns. Common scrub rates: 5–25% on auto-insurance, 15–40% on debt-relief, 30–70% on free-trial nutra. Affiliates see 'reversed conversions' or 'pending leads' in their network dashboard — those are scrubbed leads.
Example
Debt-relief offer shows 80 leads in the affiliate dashboard at end-of-day; next morning 24 of those are reversed (30% scrub rate) — net payout $1,792 at $32 CPL on 56 paid leads.