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Paying On Net Gaming Revenue (NGR) With Customer Value
Paying On Net Gaming Revenue (NGR) With Customer Value

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Paying On Net Gaming Revenue (NGR) With Customer Value

Pay a partner a share of what a player is really worth after winnings, bonuses and tax — including the months that number goes negative. The carry-forward setting that makes an iGaming revenue share work, and the vocabulary that maps casino terms onto Everflow ones.

Most affiliate deals pay a fixed amount when a player signs up and deposits. That works until you notice the obvious thing about a casino: two players who both made the same $200 FTD? are not worth the same amount, and you will not know which is which for another three months.

This article builds one rule that pays a partner a share of what their players are actually worth over a month — including the months where that number goes backwards.

The example used throughout Spinorama is an imaginary casino. It is not a real operator — the name exists so that the figures, the rule and the screenshots on this page all describe the same thing. The screens are the real Customer Value interface; the monthly figures are worked examples chosen so the arithmetic is easy to follow.

The month that goes backwards

Start here, because it is the part that decides whether this works at all, and it is the part almost nobody knows Everflow does.

NGR? is what the house keeps after it has paid out winnings, bonuses, payment fees and gaming tax. In a good month it is a large positive number. In the month a player hits a jackpot, it is negative — the casino genuinely lost money on that player.

Every other payout system treats that month as a zero and starts the next one fresh. Which means a player can cost you $8,000 in July, earn you $30,000 in August, and your partner gets paid on the full $30,000 as though July never happened.

Customer Value can carry that deficit forward instead — what the industry calls negative carryover?. It is one setting, and it is the whole reason this rule shape exists.

One player, two months, a 30% share
July
−$8,000
NGR · the player won
−$8,000 carried into August
August
$30,000
NGR · the player lost
counts as $22,000
What the partner earns for August $9,000$6,600
Always Reset. July is wiped on 1 August. The partner is paid 30% of the full $30,000, and the $8,000 the casino lost is absorbed entirely by the casino. This is what every system does by default.
Carry Forward, Negative Balance. July's deficit follows the player into August, so the share is calculated on $22,000 rather than $30,000. The partner still earns well. The loss is shared rather than absorbed.
The balance goes negative. The payout never does. Carrying a loss forward reduces what the partner earns next cycle. It does not create a debt, it never claws back money already paid, and a partner is never billed. The worst case is that they earn nothing that cycle.

The number you need

One number: NGR?, sent by your gaming platform on the conversion, as a custom data point?.

Everflow does not calculate NGR. You do.

This is the part that catches people, and it is worth being blunt about. Everflow has no formula for net gaming revenue, no GGR? field, no notion of your hold?, and no opinion about whether your bonus costs come off before or after tax. It does not know your turnover? either. Your platform works the number out and sends the finished figure.

That makes this the one Customer Value scenario where the answer to "do you already have this number?" is usually no. NGR is normally calculated in arrears, often daily, sometimes by a different team from the one that owns your tracking. Find out who owns it before you build anything.

Your words, and where they live in Everflow

Everflow is deliberately vertical-neutral — it has no casino mode, because the same machinery has to serve a broker and a games studio. So you supply the nouns. This is the translation.

You call itIn Everflow it isWorth knowing
NGRA Number custom data point you create and sendEverflow never calculates it. Send the finished figure. Unsent reads as zero.
GGRAlso a data point, if a rule needs itMost deals pay on NGR. Only send both if a rule actually uses both.
FTDA conversion event, usually with a deposit amount data point attachedThe event says it happened; the data point says how much. Most FTD rules need both.
TurnoverA Number data point, summed across the cycleUse running total, not per conversion. This is the classic setup mistake.
Negative carryoverCarry Forward set to Negative BalanceCarries the balance. Never claws back a payout.
Revenue sharePayout Model set to Percentage of a data pointNew in this version. Previously you had to misuse the amount field.
PlayerA user IDOne key, every event, for the player's whole life. The most common integration miss.
Qualified playerStacked goal conditions — geo, KYC, deposit floor"Qualified" means whatever your licence says. Everflow has no opinion, so you define it.
An unsent number is a zero, and nothing tells you If your platform stops sending ngr, Everflow does not error and does not warn. The value reads as zero, the goal is never met, and the rule simply never fires. The first person to notice is your partner, when their invoice is wrong. Check the Conversion Events report before you tell anyone the rule is live.

Step 1: Create the NGR data point

Go to Customer Value → Custom Data Points → + Data Point. You need one, and the only decision that matters is the type.

1 Name it something a human will recognise Call it NGR. Put your own definition in the Description field — "net of bonuses, fees and gaming tax, sent daily in arrears" — because the person reading this rule in a year will not be you.
2 Set Data Type to Number NGR is money and it gets added up across the month. Text data points cannot be summed. The type cannot be changed after the data point is created, so getting this wrong means creating a second one and re-briefing whoever sends it.
3 Copy the parameter name The form shows you the exact query parameter your platform has to append. Copy it — do not retype it. That string is what your developer needs, and it is the only part of this that leaves Everflow.

Negative values need no special handling. Send ngr=-8000 exactly as you would send a positive figure.

Conversion postback · the NGR parameter
https://<your-tracking-domain>/?nid=1&transaction_id=<tid>
  &user_id=910017
  &ngr=-8000
Getting the number flowing is a separate job This article assumes the data is arriving. If it is not yet:

How To Send User IDs & Data Points For Customer Value — the developer-facing setup, and how to prove the values arrived.

Step 2: Decide who the rule applies to

Create the rule under Customer Value → Payout & Revenue Rules → + Rule. The General step is scope, and for a revenue share there are only two choices worth thinking about.

Shared

One pooled total per player, across every partner. A player's NGR is a fact about the player, not about who referred them.

Pick this for a revenue share
Segmented

A separate total per partner, offer or advertiser. Use it when the same player can be claimed by two partners and you need their progress counted apart.

Spinorama applies this rule to its two revenue-share offers and leaves Progress Towards The Goal Is on Shared: one player's NGR is one player's NGR, regardless of which partner sent them.

Step 3: A monthly cycle, in the right timezone

The Timeframe step decides when the count resets. NGR is settled monthly, so this is Recurring on a Month goal cycle?.

The timezone decides which invoice a player lands on

This matters more here than anywhere else in the product. On a monthly cycle, the timezone decides which month a conversion falls into — and therefore which invoice it appears on. A conversion at 23:30 on 31 July in Berlin is a July conversion; the same conversion read in Los Angeles is still July, but one at 16:30 on 31 July in Los Angeles is already 1 August in Berlin.

Pick the timezone your finance team closes the month in Not your own, and not the network default. Spinorama runs this rule on Europe/Berlin because that is where its month ends. Set it once, deliberately, and write down why.

Step 4: The goal, and the share

The Behavior step is where the rule stops being configuration and starts being a deal. It has two halves: the condition that has to be true, and what happens when it is.

The condition

For a straight revenue share the condition is almost embarrassingly simple: the summed value of NGR is greater than zero. In other words, did this player make us money this month at all.

Operators are limited to Equal To, Greater Than and Less Than — there is no "between" and no "at least". A band needs two rules, not one clever condition.

Running total, not this conversion

This is the setup mistake that costs the most money, and it hides well because the rule still fires.

Which Value Determines the Outcome decides what the percentage is applied to. Set to running total?, it pays on everything the player accumulated this cycle. Left on the other option, it pays on the single conversion that happened to cross the line — which for a month of gaming activity is an arbitrary fraction of what you meant.

What it does if you leave it
The conversion that crossed the line

The player accumulated $30,000 of NGR across forty conversions. The fortieth was worth $400, and that is the one that tipped the total over zero.

Partner earns 30% of $400 = $120
What you meant
Running total

The percentage applies to everything the player accumulated in the cycle, which is the number the deal was written about.

Partner earns 30% of $30,000 = $9,000

Paying a percentage of a number you sent

Set Outcome Type to bonus? and When to Apply Outcome to end of cycle?. A monthly revenue share is worked out when the month closes, not the moment a player crosses zero.

Then set Payout Model to Percentage and point it at your NGR data point rather than at the applicable payout. That single line is what turns a payout rule into a revenue share. Spinorama pays its partners 30% of NGR and books 45% as its own revenue on the same rule.

Bonus or substitution? A bonus is added on top of whatever the partner already earned, and is limited to once per cycle — which is exactly right for a monthly share. A substitution replaces the payout and has no limit. If your revenue share is meant to be instead of the CPA rather than on top of it, use substitution.

Step 5: Turn on carry forward

Everything up to here builds an ordinary monthly revenue share. This step is the one that makes it work for gaming.

On the same Behavior step, the Progress section holds the Carry Forward? control, which decides what happens to the balance when the cycle ends. Its own help text is explicit: by default, all progress resets to zero at the start of every cycle.

Always Reset

The default. Every balance goes back to zero on the first of the month, good or bad.

Carry Forward · Any Value

Carries the balance whichever way it went, so a winning month also rolls forward. Rarely what a revenue share wants.

Carry Forward · Negative Balance

Carries a deficit only. Losing months follow the player; winning months settle and clear.

The one you want

Choose Carry Forward, point it at your NGR data point, and set it to Negative Balance. Losing months follow the player. Winning months do not.

Check it worked

Two places, in this order.

Read the rule back to yourself

Open the saved rule. It states its own settings back in plain language, and the line to look for is Carry Forward Settings.

If that line does not say Negative Balance against your NGR data point, losing months are being thrown away and the rule is quietly a different deal from the one you agreed.

Look up one player

Go to Customer Value → Conversion Events. The report needs a user ID — it answers questions about one player at a time, by design.

Enter one player's ID and set the range to cover the whole cycle. What you should see is a row per conversion, each one Approved, on the offers the rule is scoped to.

That answers the first question — the conversions are arriving and they are being attributed. The second question is whether your number came with them, and that one is hidden by default.

Your data point column is off the right edge

The Conversion Events table is wide, and custom data points are appended after every built-in column, so ngr starts out beyond the right edge of the screen. Nothing is wrong. Scroll the table sideways, or bring the column forward.

Once it is in view, check that an ngr value arrived on each conversion. If the column is empty, the rule was never going to fire, no matter how it is configured.

The rule name is not in this report The Conversion Events table has no rule column. To see which rule stamped a conversion, open the row menu and choose View Conversion Details — the rule name is on that page, under Customer Value Rule.

What you get

A share, not a fee

Partners earn a percentage of what their players are genuinely worth, worked out monthly from your own figure.

Losing months that count

A jackpot month follows the player into the next cycle instead of being absorbed silently by the casino.

One rule, not forty

The same rule covers every player on the offers it is scoped to. You are not writing one per band or per partner.

A number you can show

The Conversion Events report can prove, per player and per conversion, exactly what arrived and what it was worth.

Common questions

QDoes Everflow work NGR out for us?

No, and it is the one thing to get right before anything else. NGR is calculated by your gaming platform, in arrears, and sent to Everflow as a data point. If it stops arriving, Everflow reads it as zero — the rule does not error, it just goes quiet, and the first person to notice is usually the partner.

QWhere do I see this per player?

The Conversion Events report is the purpose-built view: one player, every conversion, the data points that arrived on each, and which rule applied. The Flex Report can also break down by user in the network UI, which is the better route when you want per-player figures alongside your ordinary reporting dimensions.

QCan a partner ever end up owing us money?

No. A carried deficit only reduces what they earn in the next cycle. The payout is floored at zero, nothing is clawed back, and no partner is ever invoiced. The worst outcome is a month where they earn nothing.

QHow long does a negative balance keep carrying?

Until it is worked off. A deficit rolls from cycle to cycle until enough positive NGR accumulates to clear it. If you do not want an indefinite rolling balance, that is a commercial decision to make with the partner before you switch it on, not a setting.

QDo I need a separate rule per country or per tier?

Yes, if the rate differs. A rule carries one outcome, and the operators are only Equal To, Greater Than and Less Than — so a banded deal is one rule per band. That is normal: the largest Customer Value account on the platform runs several hundred rules named on a grid so they stay findable.

QWhat if NGR arrives days after the conversion?

That is the usual case and it is fine. Data points accumulate against the player over the cycle rather than having to arrive all at once, so a figure sent in arrears still counts — as long as it arrives before the cycle settles and it carries the same user ID.

QWhy has the bonus not appeared the moment the month ended?

End-of-cycle rules are settled by a periodic evaluation rather than at the stroke of midnight, so a cycle that closed overnight may pay a couple of hours later. If it has not appeared at all, check the Conversion Events report first — an unsent NGR value is far more common than a settlement delay.

QCan I change the rule once it is running?

Some of it. The parts that would rewrite history — the data point's type, and the timezone the cycle is measured in — are fixed once the rule is live. Plan those two before you turn it on.

Explore Related Content Keep going on Customer Value:

Introduction To Customer Value — what a rule decides, and the five shapes people build.

How To Send User IDs & Data Points For Customer Value — getting the number flowing in the first place.

Build Your First Customer Value Rule — the simplest possible rule, if this is your first one.

Paying On Token & Credit Spend With Customer Value — the same machinery for an AI product, where the money arrives in token packs after the signup.

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