buy.at Unveils New Technology to Address Cookie Overwriting
September 15th, 2011A high profile topic in the affiliate industry, cookie overwriting sparks debate around which affiliates deserve a commission payout based on the nature of their involvement in the conversion process. Up to this point, the “last click” model always wins, which has caused concern when some affiliates – namely browser add-ons, toolbars and plug-ins – use promotional methods that have a greater tendency to capture those “last clicks” than others.
Challenges Drive Innovation
We are pleased to announce the release of a new “soft click cookie” tracking solution. With this technology, affiliates running a promotional method that may have a greater tendency to overwrite other affiliate cookies at the final stages of a user’s journey – namely browser add-ons, toolbars, and plug-ins – can be assigned a soft click cookie by the network that cannot overwrite cookies set by standard affiliate traffic.
How it Works
When an affiliate applies to join the network, an extensive review of their site and promotional methods occurs. If site evaluation reveals that the affiliate model could negatively impact existing affiliate cookies, a conditional acceptance to the network is offered using the soft click solution. Models which typically qualify for soft click status include browser add-ons, plug-ins and toolbars.
The process is entirely transparent – all affiliates that fall within this category receive full disclosure that their account will operate using this technology and they must confirm their acceptance of these terms before they are admitted to the network. Upon mutual agreement, our team sets up and manages the tracking process. This course of action does not require any setup or implementation work from the affiliate; they can simply begin applying to our programs. The soft click cookie setting is assigned, tracked, and policed solely by our network.
Further, our tracking now operates on an affiliate cookie hierarchy:
Hard Click
When a site visitor clicks on an affiliate link, a standard tracking cookie is set on their computer. If the visitor clicks on multiple affiliate links for the same advertiser, the last click overwrites the first cookie and receives the commission payment.
Soft Click
When a site visitor solely interacts with a link provided by a soft click cookie partner, the affiliate is awarded the commission payout in the normal way. If an affiliate cookie is already present prior to a customer’s interaction with the soft click affiliate, the original site with the hard click cookie receives the commission payment.
If no hard click cookies are present, and more than one soft click cookie affiliate is involved in the conversion process, the last click model applies.
Additional Benefits
This soft click proposition will allow advertisers to work with soft click cookie affiliates without fear of adversely impacting existing affiliate relationships. It will also help those affiliates that provide real value to an advertiser during the early stages of the purchasing process, but are frequently over-written by technology that has a tendency to capture users late in the process.
Accordingly, affiliates eligible for the soft click cookie solution can now continue conversations with advertisers that enforce a “no overwriting” policy. Initial responses to this technology are extremely positive, with affiliates saying that this solution is a “truly unique and exciting offering for the industry.”
For more information please contact the buy.at team.
September 15th, 2011 at 1:38 pm
A great direction and an amazing improvement: FOR SURE. Let’s see some wanna-be networks copy that. Well done you tireless innovators!
September 15th, 2011 at 3:55 pm
Sounds like one solution to a potential “poaching” problem – but it also sounds like a way to open the door for BHO’s, toolbars, etc. That, IMHO, is not good.
The solution I would like to see is a “persistent” cookie – with a duration of (up to) one hour. A “hard” cookie, so to speak, that cannot be over-written for a period of time would certainly keep the cookie-overwriters at bay, at least during the current sales cycle (which is when most transactions occur).
September 15th, 2011 at 4:14 pm
I like this idea, and I don’t think it will cause the problem like Bill said above. If anything it will eliminate the BHO’s outright.
Bill your idea of a hard cookie would work until the BHO’s found a workaround for that also. I am looking forward to this and welcome it. I also think it will cut down on the BHO’s from applying to to programs on the buy.at network.
September 15th, 2011 at 4:27 pm
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September 15th, 2011 at 4:51 pm
I love this – great work Buy.at
September 15th, 2011 at 4:51 pm
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September 15th, 2011 at 5:25 pm
Thanks for the comments, everyone!
I’d like to share the following from Anthony Clements, our Director of Client Services, as he is currently en route to an event:
While the idea of a ‘persistent’ cookie is appealing to prevent any cookie over-writing we have to remember that the basis of our industry’s reward mechanism is ‘last-click wins’. For all standard affiliates this is certainly not something we are looking to change. A persistent cookie would fundamentally change the ‘last-click’ model.
The soft-click mechanism is purely aimed at those promotional methods which might have a more significant tendency to over-write standard affiliates. This is important because advertisers are increasingly keen to be involved with these promotional methods, and we wanted to ensure that this activity was not going to negatively effect other affiliates.
September 15th, 2011 at 10:54 pm
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September 16th, 2011 at 1:46 am
I like this idea!
Would this essentially be a way of combating the coupon affiliates? I know here in Australia there is a lot of contempt towards coupon affiliates and some see the fact that a content affiliate or affiliate that has done a great job of converting a visitor into a customer loses their commission at the very last point because the merchant cart has a “Coupon/Voucher” section on the checkout.
This then means that someone goes for looking for a coupon and with so many “Click to reveal” voucher sites the original affiliate essentially gets their commission swiped due to the last click wins scenario and the cookie that will inadvertently drop.
September 16th, 2011 at 6:01 am
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September 16th, 2011 at 1:54 pm
Hi Zane,
Coupon affiliates have formed a generally accepted part of the industry for some time now. Currently, affiliate networks operate coupon sites on the normal last-click wins model and there would need to be a shift in the industry if that concept were to change.
We implemented soft click tracking to ensure fairness for the affiliate community when a promotional method has a greater propensity than normal to overwrite other affiliate clicks. From that perspective, soft click seems a fair and transparent way of resolving any issues of affiliates unfairly overwriting other affiliates.
This thread isn’t really the right place for debating coupon site ‘click-to-reveal’, however if you’d like to get in touch, we’re happy to speak to you in more detail about this.
September 20th, 2011 at 11:44 pm
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