Jupitermedia Says Your Cookies are at Risk! - 39% Deleted!

[Linda Buquet]

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/corporat...presearch.html

[e-Kend]

I am very new to Affiliate Marketing, but have been in IT and web development for years. But from what I understand, cookies are the only way to track affiliate sales, is that correct?

If not, what is the other way and some link info would be great.

Thanks

[MandyHaga]

You can track by IP address, but that isn't fool-proof. In all actuality, I don't believe this percentage is accurate. I recently posed this question to fellow affiliate managers and they all felt that it was less than 10%. I wouldn't get my feathers ruffled about it.

[canistotasoftware]

Originally Posted by MandyHaga

You can track by IP address, but that isn't fool-proof. In all actuality, I don't believe this percentage is accurate. I recently posed this question to fellow affiliate managers and they all felt that it was less than 10%. I wouldn't get my feathers ruffled about it.

Mandy,

Please tell me how you came to that less than 10% number? The programs I use have both cookie based and non-cookie based sales opportunities and each month my cookie based sales have been dropping exponentially while the non cookie based sales have stayed steady if not slightly increased to the point that I and many other affiliates in the programs I belong to are slowly removing or have stopped promoting all together the products that rely only on this form of tracking. I have a feeling many affiliate program managers are discounting these numbers because many of their programs rely heavily on cookie tracking only and this trend would mean serious problems for their programs if current and prospective affiliates decided to look for programs not relying so much on cookies.

[MandyHaga]

As I mentioned, I posted this question on an affiliate manager related board and this 10% or less was their deduction. I tend to agree because neither I nor a majority of our clients have seen a substantial decrease in sales figures.

Perhaps their conclusions are drawn by concern, but mine are based solely on what my personal experiences are and the questions I have in my mind about the demographic their study covers.

Did they survey standard surfers, online business people or those technically savvy. I'm not prepared to totally discount the study and, depending upon the demographic, it may be dead on. But I have my doubts until more information comes to light. Until then, I remain unbothered by the results.

[e-Kend]

Originally Posted by canistotasoftware

The programs I use have both cookie based and non-cookie based sales opportunities ...

I forgot about IP tracking. Is cookies and IP the only way to track?

Do 3rd party program management companies/managers (such as Share-a-Sale, Commission Junction, Linkshare...) pass the id with the url (querystring)?

Thanks for bearing with my questions, as I said, Im a newbie when it comes to affiliate marketing.

[MandyHaga]

Originally Posted by e-Kend

I forgot about IP tracking. Is cookies and IP the only way to track?

Do 3rd party program management companies/managers (such as Share-a-Sale, Commission Junction, Linkshare...) pass the id with the url (querystring)?

Thanks for bearing with my questions, as I said, Im a newbie when it comes to affiliate marketing.

I'm not sure of the practice most commonly used by the networks, but I do know non network affiliate solutions generally use cookies. However, some do have cookieless methods you just have to ask about them.

Affiliate marketing is a constant learning excercise. Feel free to review my Affiliate Marketing blog to help clear some of the haze. I implemented it as a primer for those new to the field as a merchant/affiliate manager or an affiliate.

[web-content-king]

I've had about a 99% success rate tracking my own visitors' origination (of course, I didn't have an affiliate program until now, and it's a low-traffic site, but the ultimate principle is the same). Here's how I do it:

Just go back and look at the traffic logs, or your stat counter program. (I use statcounter.com because it's a convenient way to get deep insight into visitors even though there's a small trade-off that comes with scripted remotely hosted tracking, in terms of having javascript on your pages and it not always deciphering redirects.)

In the traffic log, look for visitors around the time that your visitor bought from you or contacted you, then look for visitors from the same area as the visitor you're looking for (you can determine their area based on the IP of their email, or their telephone area code, or if they bought from you, that IP should be there somewhere too).

This even works for telephone conversions, since in my experience no one writes the number down to call later; they have the page open, either because they bookmarked it and opened it again, saved it and opened it again, or just didn't wait to call.

Not very hard now is it?

OK, you're thinking: that's pretty labor-intensive. But that's what assistants are for. And besides, if it's worth tracking, it's worth spending a couple minutes to track. You can also incorporate this into your regular perusal of your traffic logs which you should be doing anyway.

Anyone see any problem in this?

[MandyHaga]

It isn't a problem. But it also isn't without error as all current tracking methods are including the cookie.