Affiliate marketing depends on lead quality, and phone validation is one of the fastest ways to separate real prospects from fraudulent submissions. Affiliate networks routinely pay per lead — and when those leads contain invalid, disposable, or VoIP phone numbers, the advertiser pays for contacts that will never convert. Real-time phone validation catches these bad leads at the point of submission, protecting both the network and the advertiser from wasted spend.
The Fake Lead Problem in Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate fraud is a billion-dollar problem. Common tactics include:
- Form stuffing — Bots or low-quality publishers submit fake names and phone numbers to collect payouts
- VoIP abuse — Fraudsters use bulk-purchased VoIP numbers from services like Google Voice or TextNow to create hundreds of “unique” leads
- Recycled numbers — Disconnected or reassigned numbers are submitted repeatedly across campaigns
- Landline padding — Non-SMS-capable numbers are submitted to inflate lead counts on SMS-based campaigns
Without validation, these leads flow into your CRM, trigger follow-up sequences, consume sales rep time, and inflate acquisition costs — all without any chance of converting.
How Phone Validation Catches Bad Leads
When you validate a phone number at the moment of form submission, you get real-time signals that indicate lead quality:
- Line type detection — Flag VoIP and landline numbers that don’t match your campaign type. If you’re running an SMS campaign, only mobile numbers should pass through.
- Carrier identification — Identify high-risk carriers associated with disposable number services.
- Deliverability status — Check whether the number is active and capable of receiving calls or texts.
- Deactivation check — Catch numbers that have been disconnected or suspended.
- Porting history — Detect recently ported numbers that may indicate SIM swap fraud or number recycling.
These fields are all available in a single API call through CheckThatPhone.
Implementing Validation in Your Affiliate Funnel
At the Landing Page
Add real-time validation to your lead capture form. When a user enters a phone number, call the API before form submission completes. Reject or flag numbers that return as VoIP, landline, undeliverable, or deactivated.
In Your Lead Scoring Pipeline
For leads already in your system, run batch validation to score and segment contacts. Assign higher scores to mobile numbers with confirmed deliverability. Flag or suppress leads with suspicious carrier data.
In Publisher Quality Reporting
Track validation results by affiliate publisher. If a specific source consistently sends leads with high VoIP rates or invalid numbers, you have data-backed evidence to adjust payouts or terminate the partnership.
Real Impact on Campaign Economics
Consider a campaign generating 10,000 leads per month at $15 per lead. If 20% are invalid or fraudulent, that’s $30,000 per month wasted on leads that will never pick up the phone. Validation at $0.001 per lookup costs $10 to check the entire batch — a return of 3,000x on the validation spend alone.
Getting Started
Phone validation is the highest-leverage quality control tool available for affiliate marketing. By validating numbers in real time, you protect your budget, improve conversion rates, and hold publishers accountable with hard data. Read the API documentation to integrate validation into your lead capture flow, or explore pricing plans to find the right volume tier for your network.