What does under-delivery actually pay back?
A flight that books a million impressions and serves 820,000 has delivered 82%. On this marketplace escrow then releases 82% of the booking and refunds the rest automatically, because delivery outside a five percent tolerance is settled pro rata rather than argued. This runs that rule on your numbers — the same function the settlement job uses, not an approximation of it.
Delivery inside this band of the contracted number pays in full. Five percent is the default on this marketplace.
Why there is a tolerance at all
Ad servers, verification vendors and our own tracker never agree to the impression. A rule with no tolerance would make a two percent counting difference into a refund claim on every campaign, and both sides would spend more on the argument than the money in dispute. Five percent is the band inside which a booking pays in full here.
What counts as delivered
For impressions and clicks, what our tracker recorded — not what the publisher’s ad server reported. For conversions and installs, the postbacks received inside the flight plus a grace day, and any validation window agreed on the order. For a placement sold as presence rather than volume, the daily check that the ad or link was actually on the page.
Where the rounding goes
The released amount is floored, so a fraction of a cent stays with the buyer. Over-delivery is capped at 100%: a publisher who serves more than they sold is not invoiced for the difference.