My newest junior hire asked me this last week.
She'd spotted the word in a partner audit and didn’t have a full idea what it meant, so she asked.
Good. That is exactly what you should do, because half the people nodding along in affiliate meetings don't know either. They're just better at hiding it.
So here's the answer, for her and for you.
Leapfrogging, in one bite
Leapfrogging is when one affiliate overwrites another affiliate's tracking cookie at the last second and walks off with the commission the first one earned. The key word is another affiliate. This is a partner stealing from partner.
Picture it. A customer discovers your brand through a creator's review and clicks that affiliate's link. The cookie is set. They're sold. On the way to checkout they open a new tab to hunt for a discount code, land on a coupon site, click "reveal code," and that click drops a fresh cookie that overwrites the creator's. The creator did the work. The coupon site closes the sale on paper and takes the payout.
That is leapfrogging.
Now, a caveat that matters. A cashback extension or coupon site popping up two seconds before checkout is real, and it happens constantly. But that on its own does not prove anyone got robbed. If no affiliate touched that customer earlier in the journey, there was no cookie to leapfrog over. The site simply took last-click credit on a sale that may have been organic. That is still worth questioning on incrementality grounds, but it is a different problem from leapfrogging. Leapfrogging needs a genuine prior affiliate to steal from.
When it's actually a problem
Here's the part people miss: some leapfrogging is completely normal, and you want it. A healthy journey has multiple touchpoints. A creator introduces your brand, a deal site reassures the buyer (in case you allow them, we don’t) , someone else closes. Several partners playing different roles is the system working, not breaking.
The problem is the partner who only ever leapfrogs. Never introduces anyone, never assists, just swoops in at the last second to overwrite a genuine affiliate's cookie and take the payout. When that partner keeps landing on top of a real introducer, the introducer did the work and got nothing. Their numbers tank, they can't see why, and eventually they stop promoting you. So the serial leapfrogger quietly trains your best partners to quit, while rewarding the one that adds the least. You end up with a roster of closers and no one left to introduce.
That's when you act. Two clean options: remove the partner from the program, or set a rule so that when they leapfrog over a genuine affiliate, the credit and the commission stay with the introducer or previous touchpoint. Skip the last click, in other words, when there was a real partner before it.
How to catch it
Some affiliate networks now hand you the full conversion path, showing which partner introduced the customer, which one closed, and everyone in between. The role labels do the work for you.
The tell is obvious once you have that. Watch for partners who are always the closer and never the introducer. Then stop paying flat rates across the board. A partner who drives discovery is not worth the same as one who only ever shows up at the finish line. Tier your commissions by role, and the leapfroggers lose their reason to leapfrog.
This week, try this:
Open your network's conversion-path or journey report and look at the introducer-versus-closer roles for your top 20 affiliates.
Flag any partner that is almost always the closer and almost never the introducer or in the middle of the journey. That is your leapfrog shortlist.
Map your partners into roles (content, discovery, loyalty, coupon, cashback) and set commission tiers that match the work, not the timing.
Tell your newest team member they asked a great question. Then go ask a "dumb" one yourself.
Talk soon, Jani Gysels
Missed a past edition? Read the full Affiliate Snacks archive here: https://affiliate-snacks.beehiiv.com/archive