Pass the Cookies On The Left Hand Side February 21st, 2006 9:22 pm

If you asked an average affiliate what happened when a user followed their link and proceeded to make a sale in general the answer you’d expect would be “i’d earn a commission” as “last referral wins”! However, that may not actually be the case.

When you hear other affiliates, especially those more clued up on technical aspects of affiliate marketing, suggest that some cookies could possibly take precedent over another then the “last referral” model flies rapidly out of the window and potentially negates work done by the affiliate.

For example a merchant undertaking PPC activity of it’s own could potentially decide that that cookie is the dominant referral, so if a customer clicks through to the merchant via the PPC ad, but later in the day visits via an affiliate link - perhaps due to a brilliantly crafted landing page or SEO - the affiliate referral does not get the sale. In other words the merchant is casting aside the last referral model.

Fact or fiction? Well as affiliates are concerned about it, it does seem there’s more to it than rumour. It also raises the transparency question again. As affiliates the minimum we expect is to promote links that track sales so if a user follows our codes, sales are tracked according, reported and paid.

Unfortunately all the cookie bypassing, non-tracking, action referral issues and poor monitoring is reaching unacceptable levels for many affiliates. With so many merchants around and issues becoming more widely spoken about - affiliates will soon be upping links and moving to merchants where they know they will be treated fairly and with transparency.

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