Budgets & Caps limit how many impressions, clicks and conversions an offer accepts, and how much revenue it can generate, per hour, per day, per month or in total. Use them to respect the volume or budget the advertiser agreed to, and choose what happens to the traffic once a cap is reached.
Go to Offers → [your offer] → GENERAL → Budgets & Caps.
Caps at a glance
Aftrad has caps at four levels. This article covers the offer's own caps; the others have their own articles.
Level | Where | What it limits |
Advertiser global caps | Advertisers → [advertiser] → GENERAL → Main setup → Advertiser global caps | Revenue per month and clicks per day across all the advertiser's offers |
Offer caps | Offers → [offer] → GENERAL → Budgets & Caps | This offer, for all affiliates together |
Affiliate quota | Offers → [offer] → AFFILIATES → Edit | One affiliate on one offer |
Restrictions bypass | Network, affiliate or offer + affiliate | Lets an affiliate's traffic ignore the offer's caps, targeting or both |
Set the caps
Each card (Impressions, Clicks, Conversions, Revenue) has three limits:
Per hour, Per day, Per month (optional) — the maximum the offer accepts in each period. Leave a field empty for no limit.
The Totals block sets lifetime limits for the same four metrics.
When the offer reaches any of its caps, it stops accepting traffic (see Capping behavior below). Daily and monthly caps start again at 00:00 in the offer's Timezone (Main setup).
Note: To let one affiliate keep sending traffic after a cap is reached, turn on Ignore caps for that affiliate. See Restrictions bypass for affiliates and offers.
Traffic distribution
The Impressions and Clicks cards have a Traffic distribution option, so a cap isn't used up in the first minutes of the hour or day:
Option | What it does |
Not controlled | Traffic is accepted as it arrives; a cap can be reached early in the hour or day. |
Evenly with hourly priority | Spreads traffic evenly against Per hour (uses Per day when Per hour is empty). |
Evenly with daily priority | Spreads traffic evenly against Per day (uses Per hour when Per day is empty). |
If neither Per hour nor Per day has a value, traffic is always Not controlled.
Advertiser traffic spikes protection
Click Enable advertiser traffic spikes protection in the Impressions or Clicks card to add a Maximum impressions per minute or Maximum clicks per minute field. It protects the advertiser's servers from sudden spikes: set it only when the advertiser asks for it.
When Per hour has a value, Aftrad suggests one Calculated from Per hour value (for example, 167 per minute for 10,000 per hour): click USE to apply it.
Capping behavior
Capping behavior, at the top of the tab, decides what happens once the offer reaches a cap.
When cap is reached impressions and clicks
No longer reach the offer — new impressions and clicks are not accepted. The click follows the affiliate's fallback: an alternative offer, the Traffic Back URL or a blank page (see Affiliate fallback).
Are accepted and processed normally — the offer keeps accepting traffic after the cap.
When cap is reached conversions
Are retained — conversions received after the cap get the Retained status and are not attributed to the affiliate until you review them.
Are processed normally — conversions keep being processed and attributed.
Default values from the advertiser
Offers take their caps and capping behavior from the advertiser: Advertisers → [advertiser] → GENERAL → Budgets & Caps. These are default values for each of the advertiser's offers, not a limit for the advertiser as a whole (that's Advertiser – Global caps).
When you change the advertiser's values, every offer that hasn't overridden them follows the change. When you change a card on the offer, an orange icon appears next to its title: You're overriding the default values. Click to restore. Click it to go back to the advertiser's values.
While Capping behavior uses the advertiser's values, hovering a field shows There are default values. Click to overwrite: click it to change that setting for this offer.
Which events count towards caps
Accepted conversions count towards conversion and revenue caps whatever their status: Processed, Retained, Temporarily retained and Withheld. Rejected conversions don't count.
An event only counts if the payout rule applied to it says so, in Payouts & Events → [rule] → Event setup:
Conversion Cap — Yes: conversions of this event count towards the offer's conversion caps.
Revenue Budget (Payable rules only) — Yes: the revenue of this event counts towards the offer's revenue caps.
⚠️ Important: check that both are set to Yes in the payout rules whose events must count. Set them to No for events you don't want to count, such as a secondary event the advertiser doesn't limit.
