1. The offer: what we sell and what we're paid for
An offer is an advertiser's product or service plus the terms on which they pay for a customer. The terms always include three things: the payout (how much per action), the target action (an order, a sign-up, a confirmed lead) and the GEO — the countries they accept traffic from.
You don't pick an offer by the highest payout. $40 per order at a 30% approval rate is worse than $25 at 70%: out of every hundred leads, the first pays for 30 and the second for 70.
2. Source and creative: where the people come from
A source is an ad platform: Meta, TikTok, Google, native networks, push. A creative is what a person sees in the feed: a video, an image, a text. The combination "offer + GEO + source + creative" is what buyers call a setup.
The creative matters more than targeting settings. The same offer with different creatives can differ several-fold in click price — which is why angles and visuals are tested first.
3. Landing page and tracker: what happens after the click
After the click a person lands on a landing page that continues the creative's promise. If the creative says "laptop on sale" and the page talks about "deal of the week", part of the audience leaves at once.
A tracker records every click and passes a tag to the affiliate program. Without it you won't know which creative brought an order and which just spent the budget.
4. Money: spend today, revenue after review
The ad platform charges you immediately, while the affiliate program pays only for confirmed actions. Between the lead and the confirmation there's a hold — from a few days to a few weeks.
| Stage | What you see | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Launch day | $200 spent, 40 leads | Leads aren't money yet |
| Hold | 28 confirmed, 12 under review | Revenue grows as actions are confirmed |
| Result | 34 confirmed × $9 | Revenue $306, profit $106 |
5. The decision: scale, change or switch off
After a couple of days you have numbers, not feelings. The setup is profitable — add budget carefully. Clicks are cheap but there are no leads — the landing page is the problem. Leads come in but don't get confirmed — the traffic quality or the offer is the problem. Nothing works within the test budget — switch it off without regret.
6. The payout
At Outrun Media, confirmed revenue goes to your personal account, and every 3 days the buyer receives their spend plus their share of the profit — 70 to 90% depending on the level. During onboarding you go through this whole cycle on the company's budget: you learn on real numbers without risking your own money.
The key point: a launch isn't "set it and wait". It's a short loop — hypothesis → test → numbers → decision — repeated every day.