impact.com Compliance and Quality Control

Quick Answer Compliance is making sure the partners you pay did legitimate, incremental work. impact.com gives you Event Risk scoring to flag suspicious activity, but the real protection is vetting partners, writing clear terms, watching outliers, and reversing bad actions before they lock.

What it is

impact.com includes Event Risk — a system that scores conversions for signs of fraud or anomaly — but a score is only a prompt, not a decision. Compliance is the human routine around it: checking that high-converting partners earned it honestly, that no one is bidding on your brand, and that traffic quality matches what you're paying for.

Think of Event Risk like a smoke alarm. It's invaluable, but it doesn't put out fires or decide which ones matter — that's still your job when it goes off.

Why it matters

Non-incremental and fraudulent conversions cost you twice: wasted payout, and budget denied to honest partners. Because impact.com automates payouts, an unreviewed Event Risk flag can lock and pay before you ever see it. Brand bidding intercepts customers you'd have won anyway and inflates your own search costs. Treating compliance as a regular routine — not a one-off — is what keeps automation working for you instead of against you.

How it works

Vet applicants before approving — check the real site, promotional methods, and audience fit.
Write explicit contract terms on brand bidding, traffic sources and allowed methods.
Review Event Risk flags on a regular schedule and investigate the high-risk ones before actions lock.
Watch outliers: conversion far above normal, near-instant click-to-sale, or sudden volume from a new partner.
Search your own brand name regularly to catch trademark bidding in paid search.
Reverse risky, returned or fraudulent actions within the locking window before payout.
Document decisions so there's a record if a partner disputes a reversal.

! Common mistakes to avoid

Treating Event Risk scores as the final word instead of a prompt to investigate.
Auto-approving applicants, letting low-quality partners in by default.
Never searching your own brand, so paid-search brand bidding runs unnoticed.
Letting flagged actions lock and pay before anyone reviews them.

💡 Reporting tips

Combine Event Risk with your own monthly outlier check: sort partners by conversion rate and click-to-sale time and look hard at the extremes. A partner with many high-risk events plus implausible timing deserves a manual review before validation. New partners posting big first-month numbers should be checked before their actions lock. Keep notes period to period so a partner drifting toward the edges is caught before a large payout, not after.

In practice: a worked example

Event Risk flags a partner as high-risk, but the score alone doesn't tell you why. You investigate: conversion is 5x your norm, timing is near-instant, and they appear on your brand name in paid search. The score was the smoke alarm; your review was the fire crew. You reverse the flagged actions inside the locking window, tighten the contract terms, and remove the partner. Treating the score as gospel would have been wrong in both directions — some flags are false alarms, and some real fraud scores lower than you'd expect. The discipline that protects you isn't the algorithm; it's the monthly habit of pairing the platform's flags with your own outlier check and a quick brand-name search.

When to lean in — and when to hold back

Investigate when	Probably fine when
Event Risk flags cluster on one partner	Flags are occasional and spread normally
Conversion is far above your programme norm	Conversion sits in the expected band
The partner shows on your brand terms in search	Traffic comes from their own content and audience
A new partner posts big numbers instantly	Growth ramps gradually as placements build

Related guides

Frequently asked questions

It's a scoring system that flags conversions showing signs of fraud or anomaly. It's a prompt to investigate, not an automatic verdict — you still decide what to do with each flag.

It surfaces risk through Event Risk and lets you set terms and reverse actions, but it doesn't make all the decisions for you. Regular human review is still essential.

Search your own brand name in paid search regularly and set clear contract terms prohibiting it, so any breach is unambiguous and actionable.