Bad News for Affiliate Commissions

Cookie based tracking issues have been one of my top industry concerns for a long time. I have heard startling numbers about the percentage of sales that can't be tracked due to various cookie issues - especially since spyware and privacy issues continue to be highlighted more & more in the news.

However I could never get my hands on a study that looked at the number of surfers who delete or block cookies until now. This is not good news!

The report found that as many as 39% of online users may be deleting cookies monthly and 44% of online users believe that deleting or blocking cookies will protect their privacy and enhance Internet security.

"Users Removing Cookies causes Trouble for Marketers"
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/1884

ACCURATE WEB SITE VISITOR MEASUREMENT CRIPPLED BY COOKIE BLOCKING AND DELETION, JUPITERRESEARCH FINDS
http://www.jupitermedia.com/corpora...upresearch.html

I think moral of the story is don't build your site dependent on cookies (or choose an affiliate system that does), and if you do, make sure there is an alternative solution in place for those who disable/delete cookies. Its been a growing problem that can be solved by using server side session management and membership.

Linda,

How can we quickly tell for sure which type of performance tracking an affiliate program is using?

And, what type of performance tracking should we be looking for as "most reliable"?

Thanks! We have a lot riding on these items and being able to pick a winner can mean a lot of dough.

The problem is that how else do you do tracking?

People don't understand the Internet so those who think they are "tech savvy" hear someone else say "delete your cookies and you're safe!" and they go bonkers.

People will eventually understand that cookies aren't the devil but, until then, there's not much else you can do considering that web pages are stateless. Cookies are the only persistant method to keep data that doesn't involve URL session tracking (and when the browser is closed that goes away).

Something that would really help this along would be Microsoft adopting the Firefox "cookie review tool" that allows you to see all cookies on your computer and selectively delete them. So long as IE only has an all or none option people will pick none.

EGOL, the best method to see if they use cookies is to use Firefox. As I said you can audit what cookies are stored on your computer so just click a link and then check your cookies. To my knowledge there's no way to audit IE (at least not easily or without a third party program). The only way to tell is to go to Documents and Settings > Your XP/2K username > Cookies but this method is clinky at best since cookies are .txt files and stored with loads of non-ASCII characters.

Thanks for the cookie tip Highland. I didn't know about that. Need to look at a new browser.

Thanks!

EGOL,

Every affiliate program out there right now uses cookie tracking. That's why this news is so much of a concern.

Not only is there the issue of people deleting their cookies, but more and more firewalls and anti-spyware programs either block, flag or delete cookies. The more adware, spyware, malware and activeX crap thats out there, the more consumers are going to buy programs like this to try to stay safe on the net.

There is a new affiliate network that says they offer cookieless tracking. I don't see how they can, but have been meaning to try to contact them to find out more about what they are doing.

I will try to get more info. The only other tracking I'm aware of is IP tracking and it has a different set up limitations. Talked to our lead tracking solution's president today about this issue. They have some very high tech options, but he said they are so sophisicated that the average merchant can't get them implemented ane working properly. I assume he's talking about stuff like aphelion was referring to.

Thanks for those details Catalyst. I hope that they figure out a way to do this because I don't like losing commissions.

Bottom line is unless the browsers comes up with something we can't do anything. Even if you track via IPs you will still lose a large percent of your surfers as they reconnect or renew their IP over time as a IP is leased from the ISP for x amount of time or until the user disconnects. MAC address would be nice but that’s point-to-point and not end-to-end so it would not work either.

If* the user removed or blocked cookies as it happened then one could write a system to back it up and start tracking via URL, but if the user goes away for a day or two they will be assigned a new IP and then its no good. Only those with static IP’s and a small percent that manage to stay connected via Cable/DSL without renewing their IP will be tracked.

With the percent of users on highspeed and the chance of them leasing the same IP until they pay for a item you would still have a far better percent at cookies lasting then IP tracking.

With IP tracking you would lose a 30 day sale, cookies you have a better percent at making the sale.

You are right that cookie use is the way of the past.

Its nice to see that not all affiliate program use cookies, we use many programs that create actual pages using part of our linking code, so this way they track the user and they also let us promote the pages within the search engines as the page is actually a page built using our affiliate code.

These types of program will see a rise in use as more affiliate publishers demand this, CJ is working on getting these types of programs for affiliates and already has some advertisers that allow this as they know that if they don't offer it they will lose some of the big affiliate publishers.

Cookie programs are a cheap way to setup an affiliate program and which is why is the common system used, but more and more publishers and advertisers are seeing the light and changing away from cookie tracking.

Ahhh the cookie monster..

Lets use CJ for example 80 and lets use eBAY! ok this is what they typically do I am using eBay as a example as I had experience with their crap.

They use Mediaplex to help track their commisions as a primary tracking however they use cookies and when this method fails... which it does the majority of the time for a large portion they " Audit " the ip address's of refer sales and cross reference the time of the sale to the last affiliate's refer tag to ip.

This is somewhat good news as when the smoke clears one month later you can see another 50 percent of your sales credited.

50 percent is a huge portion and when you get into the thousands you realize how much a affiliate " Can " and will rip you off.

However if you choose to use " the den of thieves " I still have a account their but now I use amazon... since their credible I found keep this in mind.

Fortune Affiliates uses session tracking to monitor sales. This works well in the casino/poker business where the transaction is a download. Maybe other industries could use this as a basis for tracking their affiliate programs.

Look forward to hearing more.

Thanks,

John

5Star, have you observed any similar trends regarding session blocking?

The ultimate problem is that, no matter what you do, you are wholly dependent upon the client having something on their machine to do tracking for you. Since the client resides on their machine and the web is stateless you are 100% at their mercy.

Cookies, client side programs, sessions... all of these are ways developed to combat the stateless web. It's not cookies that are obsolete, it's the statelessness of the web itself. I mean I can't think of a foolproof method of doing tracking. Cookies can be blocked, URLs can be altered and you can't very well force people to download new software JUST to track their movements. People are already having enough trouble keeping such programs off their machine as it is.

As I said before, this is a war for the hearts and minds of the Avg Joe who doesn't know a cookie from a plugin and yet he knows just enough to know he doesn't want someone tracking him across cyberspace so people say "Delete your cookies!" and he obeys.

I live by one major motto in writing ANY software


Convince people that cookies aren't all bad (they aren't) and give them better options beyond "Delete All Cookies" and I think you'll see the problem diminish significantly.