Affiliate Reporting: Keep Archived Campaigns in Historical Comparisons

A historical performance report should describe the campaigns that contributed during its selected period. If a report includes only campaigns that are active today, it may leave out earlier tests that were later paused or archived. For performance marketing media buying, that creates a risk of evaluating past decisions using an incomplete set of campaigns.

Define the reporting population first

Before exporting, write a simple inclusion rule: all campaigns with relevant activity during the reporting period, regardless of their current status. Record the account, period, time zone, metrics, and any intentional exclusions. This is a proposed reporting control, not a statement that every advertising platform applies the same default filters.

Distinguish current status from status during the period. A campaign marked active today might have had no activity last month. A campaign archived today might have supplied much of last month's spend. Neither label alone answers the historical question.

Inspect how status affects the export

Check the visible status controls and the export documentation for the system you use. Where possible, compare an all-status export with the active-only view for the same period. Include stable campaign identifiers so a renamed or archived campaign can be recognized across files.

If an export cannot retrieve an older campaign, preserve that limitation in the report. Do not enter zero spend or zero revenue simply because a row is inaccessible. Request an appropriate historical export or reconcile against a retained snapshot, documenting the source and collection date.

Use a small example to expose the distortion

Consider a hypothetical period with three campaigns. Two campaigns still active today recorded combined spend of 800 and attributed revenue of 1,200. A third campaign, now archived, recorded spend of 200 and attributed revenue of 100. All amounts use the same currency and reporting basis.

An active-only view shows revenue divided by spend of 1.50. Including the archived campaign produces 1,300 divided by 1,000, or 1.30. The difference comes from the reporting population, not a performance improvement. Revenue divided by spend also is not net affiliate profit: commissions, reversals, fees, and other costs require their own definitions and reconciliation.

Reconcile the missing rows

• Compare campaign identifier sets between the two views.
• Explain each excluded campaign using an explicit rule.
• Reconcile spend and revenue differences to those excluded rows.
• Keep truly unavailable values separate from confirmed zeros.
• Save the export settings with the report so another analyst can reproduce the comparison.

Do not force agreement by deleting inconvenient campaigns. If the intended question concerns current operations, a current-active subset can be useful, but label it clearly and keep it separate from the complete historical view.

Make the decision match the evidence

For CPS offer scaling, a review of completed tests should include unsuccessful campaigns as well as survivors. Otherwise, the remaining campaigns can make the overall testing process look stronger than the full record supports. The BlueFriday media buyer page offers context for media buying relationships; individual reporting access and metric definitions still need confirmation with the relevant provider.

Attach a short population note to each comparison. State whether archived campaigns were included, which records could not be recovered, and whether the totals reconcile. That gives a reviewer a concrete basis for judging the result before using it to guide the next test.