Sharklio Terms Explained: Reviews, Disputes and Holds

What do the words in the Sharklio dashboard mean?

Most Sharklio terms describe one journey: a user does your task and sends proof, which is a completion. You approve or reject it within your approval window, the user can dispute a rejection, and until the result is final its cost sits on hold in your balance. This page defines each of these words, plus the campaign statuses, limits and offer terms, in one to three sentences each.

For general advertising terms such as CPA, CPI, conversion rate or ROAS, see the advertising glossary. The definitions below are about how things work on Sharklio specifically.

Campaign types and statuses

• Task campaign: a campaign where users complete an action and send proof, and you approve or reject each result. It is open to every advertiser.
• Offer campaign: a campaign where users reach goals in your app or on your site, and your server confirms each step with a postback. Offer campaigns are set up by arrangement with our team. Task vs offer campaigns compares the two.
• Draft: a campaign you saved but did not submit. You can save drafts with any balance, and nothing runs.
• In review: our staff are checking the campaign before it goes live, which usually takes a few hours. A live campaign also returns to review when you change anything in its Basics section, apart from the internal title.
• Active: the campaign is live and shown to matching users on publishers’ offerwalls.
• Paused: the campaign is not shown to users. Every newly approved campaign starts as Paused until you choose Resume. You can pause and resume it yourself, and it is also paused automatically when your balance cannot cover the next result. A campaign paused by our team can only be resumed by our team.
• Changes needed: our review team did not approve the campaign as it is. The reason is shown at the top of the edit page, and you can fix it and submit again.
• Completed: the campaign spent its total budget. Raise the budget to keep it running. Unlike Paused, it has nothing to do with your balance.

Task campaign terms

• Starting link: the page a user must open before they can do your task, if you tick “Require that users click on a starting link first”. Each completion then shows whether the user clicked on the link.
• Completion: one user’s submitted result on a task campaign, with their proof, country, device, and how long they took. Once a user starts a task, they have 24 hours to send it.
• Proof: what the user submits to show the task is done. The proof type is Screenshot only, Text only, or Screenshot + Text, and the proof requirement is your description of exactly what the proof must show.
• Approval window: how long you give yourself to approve or reject each completion, from 30 minutes to 3 days. It is set per campaign, and you can change it later.
• Automatic approval: a completion you do not approve or reject before its window ends is approved automatically and charged, exactly as if you had approved it. Its history then says “Approved automatically because the review window ended”.
• Pending (Waiting for you): a completion that is still inside its approval window and has no decision yet.
• Approved: a completion that you, the automatic approval, or Sharklio staff accepted. Its cost is deducted from your balance.
• Rejection: your decision that a completion does not meet the requirements you stated. Every rejection needs a reason, which the user sees. A rejection becomes final if the user does not dispute it within 72 hours, and then nothing is charged.

Disputes

• Dispute: a user’s challenge to one of your rejections, sent within 72 hours with a reason and, optionally, a screenshot. Disputes appear under Disputes in your dashboard.
• Accept or keep the rejection: you have 72 hours to answer a dispute. Accepting approves and charges the completion; keeping the rejection, with an explanation, sends the dispute to our staff.
• Staff decision: if you keep the rejection, or do not answer within 72 hours, Sharklio staff look at your requirements, the proof, the dispute and your answer, and decide. If they uphold the dispute, the completion is approved and charged; otherwise the rejection stands and nothing is charged.

How to handle completion disputes covers how to answer one well.

Balance and money terms

• Balance: the prepaid amount you top up to pay for results. It has no cash value and cannot be withdrawn, and you need at least $1 to submit a campaign for review.
• Bid: what you pay for one approved completion in a given country, from $0.01 to $100. Every country in a campaign has its own bid.
• On hold: money set aside for completions that are not decided yet: waiting for your review, rejected but still open to a dispute, or in a dispute. It is not charged yet; you pay it only if the completion is approved, and it becomes free again when a rejection is final. Balance holds explained has the details.
• Available to spend: your balance minus what is on hold. Campaigns stop showing to users when this cannot cover their price.
• Reversal: taking back a result that was already approved or credited, for example because of fraud. A task completion can be reversed by our team, and you can reverse a credited offer step yourself within 30 days.
• Refund: when a result is reversed, its cost goes back to your balance and shows as a refund in your transactions. Top-ups themselves are final. See Reversals and refunds.

Budgets, caps and audience limits

• Total campaign budget: the most the whole campaign may spend. When spend reaches it, the campaign stops. Set 0 for unlimited.
• Hourly and daily spend caps: the most the campaign may spend in a rolling hour or day. Leave them at 0 for no limit.
• Hourly and daily completion caps: the most results the campaign accepts in a rolling hour or day. In offer campaigns they are called conversion caps.
• Frequency cap: how often the same user can complete a task: once ever, again after an interval from 5 minutes to 7 days, or unlimited. An offer can be done once per user.
• User inclusion and exclusion: show a campaign only to users approved on campaign IDs you list, or hide it from them.
• Source: the publisher site or app a user came from. Each campaign lists its sources with their results, and you can block a source so its users no longer see that campaign.

Offer campaign terms

• Tracking link: where users go when they start your offer. It must contain {click_id}, and it can also pass {country}, {device} and {source}.
• Click ID: the value we put in {click_id} for each user who starts the offer. Your server sends it back so we know whose step it was.
• Step (goal): one result inside an offer, such as “Install and open the app” or “Reach level 10”, with its own price. An offer can have up to 15 steps, and you pay only for the steps a user reaches.
• Event ID: the name your server sends as goal= to say which step was reached, for example install. Left empty, it is the step number.
• Postback: the server-to-server call your tracker makes to our postback URL when a user reaches a step. The step is charged when it arrives, for clicks up to 30 days old. A postback with status=reversed takes a credited step back. The offer postbacks guide has the exact format.
• Conversion: one credited step in an offer campaign, the offer equivalent of an approved completion.
• Test click and test postback: under Test your integration on the offer page, you can create a test click and send postbacks for it. Nothing is charged and no user is credited.

Multi-step offer campaigns explains how these pieces fit together.

Frequently asked questions