Registration, FTD, Deposit, NGR: Name the Events
Operators and affiliates argue in different nouns. A registration is not an FTD. A deposit is not NGR. A glossary of the events that actually move money, so finance and the tracking link stop using the same word for four things.
Most tracking arguments are naming arguments. Someone says conversion and means a registration. Someone else says conversion and means a first deposit. Finance says conversion and means NGR for the month. All three then open a CSV and discover they were never talking about the same row.
This is a naming post. It is for operators wiring postbacks and for affiliates reading a deal. It is not a tour of how events are matched. The glossary is the affiliate-facing dictionary. This is the event list behind it.
Four events, in the order they happen
Registration. An account exists. Useful. Rarely what anyone is paid on in iGaming, because signups are cheap to fake and cheaper to forget. Fire it anyway. Affiliates use it to see whether the landing works before the cashier does.
FTD, first-time deposit. Real money arrived for the first time. On many casino deals this is the qualifying event. On many sportsbook deals it is not: you still need a settled qualifying bet. If your postback named FTD and your deal means qualifying bet, you have already built the month-end argument. The sportsbook playbook.
Deposit. Any later real-money deposit. Needed for RevShare and for anyone who cares whether the player stayed. Not a second FTD. Sending it with the same event name as FTD is how CPA double-counts.
NGR. Not a ping. A statement about a period: what the operator kept after the deductions the deal lists. Wins, bonuses, payment costs, fees, taxes if they are in the deal. Negative carryover is the clause that decides whether a bad period follows you into the next one. Do not fire NGR as a stream of tiny increments you hope will add up. Send it as a period, or calculate it from deposits and the rest of the ledger you already trust.
What operators should fire
Registration, FTD, subsequent deposits, as separate event types, with a stable id per event so a retry is the same object. Idempotent postbacks. Field names live in the docs.
Do not invent a fifth name that means "something good happened". Affiliates cannot price that. Finance cannot close it.
Chargebacks and bonus reversals are adjustments, not extra FTDs. They belong on the ledger as themselves. Affiliates see them as held or reversed commission, which how payouts work already walks through.
What affiliates should read in the deal
Which of those four you are paid on. CPA on FTD is not CPA on qualifying bet. RevShare on NGR is not RevShare on deposits. Hybrid is some of both, spelled out.
If the deal says conversion and does not define it, ask. If the answer is an adjective, ask again. How to read an iGaming offer.
On AFFILIFY the click becomes a line you can open: brand, event, GEO, sub-ids. Rates stay per brand and GEO, in USD. Pending clears on the 15th. Naming the event correctly is how that line means something.
Traffic quality is checked continuously. We do not publish the checklist. The capability is: the event you fired is the event that paid. The matching details stay off this page.
Frequently asked questions
Should I pay affiliates on registration?
Almost never in iGaming. Registrations are too cheap and too far from money. Fire the event so they can debug landings. Pay on FTD or on NGR, defined in the deal. CPL exists in other verticals; here it is how you buy empty accounts.
Is every deposit an FTD?
No. FTD is the first. Later deposits are deposits. If your integration fires FTD on every cash-in, CPA will overpay until finance notices, and then everyone will have a month to unwind.
Can NGR be a postback?
It can be a periodic statement. It should not be a firehose of micro-events. Affiliates on RevShare need a stable period they can recognise in the wallet, not a running guess.
Where do qualifying bets fit?
On sportsbook deals they often replace FTD as the payable event. That is a fifth noun for a reason. Do not overload FTD to mean it. Name it, define the minimum stake and price, and fire it when the bet has settled, not when it was placed.
More from this cluster
Idempotent Postbacks: Why Finance Teams Care About Double Counting
A postback that is safe to retry is the difference between a number finance will sign and a number finance will argue about. What idempotent means, why operators send the same event more than once, and what affiliates should see in the wallet when they do.
Postbacks, Pixels and Image Tags: Only One of Them Can Be Paid Against
Three mechanisms for reporting a conversion, described so a non-engineer can hold them, plus the six ways integrations actually break. Written for operators and technical affiliate managers who have debugged this at eleven at night.