Over the past 18 months or so, a number of reports relating to the high rate of cookie washing (users erasing cookies from their browsers) have been reported. Affiliates, need to ensure that they receive compensation for the entire length in which a merchant promises to pay within, if a referred user makes a transaction.
From our internal numbers, we had begun to see the return rates of cookie’d users declining, with some of the
affiliate programs that we work with. We figured that there could be a number of possibilities relating to this, including, but not limited to:
A) Changes in online user’s behaviour (i.e. they tended to either purchase immediately or not)
B) Changes on the merchant’s side (not following up with email
marketing etc.)
C) Cookie Washing
In order to determine the extent of cookie washing, we decided to outsource the creation of an independent study to Ben Edelman, a known expert in this space. The main purpose of the report, was to provide Clicks2Customers with a detailed overview of the state of cookie- based tracking within online advertising/affiliate marketing.
This report was initially intended to be for internal purposes only, but we decided that it would best serve the industry if it was released, so this is exactly what we are doing. Ben Edelman has retained full editorial control over the work, as an independent party to this research (he is neither an affiliate nor a software provider).
The report is located here and my analysis of it is as follows: The scope of the report was limited only to cookie based tracking, and some/most networks do use alternative methods (session/URL, batch, etc). In many cases, a large portion (40-50% of the transactions, from our stats) occur on day 1. The tests that Ben conducted related to cookie erasure when the program was initiated, potentially the next day when a computer is restarted, or perhaps longer. It is unlikely that the first day cookies are erased in large numbers but potentially this erodes future return sales.
Merchants are theoretically able to take advantage of affiliate activity, when their users delete cookies with anti-spyware, but only in short term. In the long term affiliates would lower their media spend or even decide not to participate in campaigns, because of too low ROI. Thus, merchants on the one hand sometimes don’t pay pay when cookies are deleted, but on the other hand the overall sales volume decreases in the long term.
The findings are as expected – the larger and more prominent networks are being unfairly (in my opinion) targeted by anti-spyware/adware companies. This does however present the problem that affiliates are often not compensated enough by merchants for users that purchase, post cookie-erasure. If this trend continues, it will potentially undermine the hard work that affiliates put into marketing campaings.
Remember, affiliate networks typically get a cut of affiliate commissions, so it is in their best interest to ensure tracking compliance, however, given the fact that this piece of market intelligence has not been available up to now, I can understand why there has been a perceived complacency on their part. The main issue here is, that these anti-spyware providers tend to see 3rd Party cookies as a risk to the user, but as we all know, in almost all cases they are completely harmless.
My recommendation to affiliates networks is that they implement “Private Labelling” of their services for their clients, so that cookies can be placed by sub-domains which the merchants own (i.e. www.vinnylingham.com would CName www2.vinnylingham.com to the service provider’s server and then when that server wishes to cookie the user, it will not appear as a 3rd Party cookie, but as one placed by www2.vinnylingham.com).
Ben also discovered that Google’s tracking system works very well technically, and from our experiences, the tracking is very accurate – it is worth noting the system that they use, as outlined in the report. Based on this report, up to 43% of cookies are potentially being erased (on a weighted basis), post the initial session the user conducts. This is scary thought for affiliates and I’m sure that this report will spark a lot of debate – so please feel free to post comments on this blog.
Update: I neglected to mention that Ben also put together this nifty cookie calculator, which calculates potential losses from cookie washing.
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Comments On This Post
September 13, 2006 at 7:35 pm
[...] VinnyLingham.com [...]
September 14, 2006 at 6:56 pm
Great post Vinny. I am looking forward to read more on “Private Labeling”. Unfortunately I am new to affiliate marketing, and as I was reaserching one particular company I made a test purchase and little do you kow my purchase was not registered by tracking system. Turnes out that computer I was using had blcked all cookies.
September 14, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Great post Vinny. I am looking forward to read more on “Private Labeling”. Unfortunately I am new to affiliate marketing, and as I was reaserching one particular company I made a test purchase and little do you kow my purchase was not registered by tracking system. Turnes out that computer I was using had blcked all cookies.
September 15, 2006 at 4:19 am
[...] Cookie Washing and Ad Blocking have been issues for a long time, though the cookie issue has been raised recently with extra urgency. Surely cookie washers can’t delete cookies from the Ebay domain. [...]
November 13, 2006 at 10:04 pm
[...] Special Report: Cookies Detected by Anti-Spyware Software [...]
January 9, 2007 at 12:51 am
Nice site actually. Gone to my favourites. Thanks for creation.
January 8, 2007 at 10:51 pm
Nice site actually. Gone to my favourites. Thanks for creation.
February 26, 2007 at 4:55 pm
I think your idea of identifying cookies to the owner of the site you are visiting make total sense. Also, maintaning a reference list on the site to explain each cookies’s purpose, would help greatly. I personally erase any cookies I cannot identify as least to the owner unless I can find info that reassures me of it’s purpose. I found this site as a result of a Google search trying to identify find which Yahoo related cookies do what. Until I find out, they stay on the delete list.
February 26, 2007 at 2:55 pm
I think your idea of identifying cookies to the owner of the site you are visiting make total sense. Also, maintaning a reference list on the site to explain each cookies’s purpose, would help greatly. I personally erase any cookies I cannot identify as least to the owner unless I can find info that reassures me of it’s purpose. I found this site as a result of a Google search trying to identify find which Yahoo related cookies do what. Until I find out, they stay on the delete list.
April 4, 2007 at 12:17 am
[...] 1. The Cookie Report 2. Profit Sharing Report 3. Best Business Books of Our Paradigm 4. HBD Capital invests in incuBeta 5. Clash of the Titans – A Fresh Perspective on how “the others” went wrong 6. Web Apps vs Desktop Apps 7. Affiliate Summit West 2007 – Opening Session 8. The Future of Search Engines 9. Meet the Super Bloggers of Search (Pubcon) 10. Pubcon Keynote Address – Malcolm Gladwell [...]
May 1, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Excellent post.
Another cool by-product of the report is that it tells me exactly which anti-spyware product to install…
May 1, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Excellent post.
Another cool by-product of the report is that it tells me exactly which anti-spyware product to install…
December 14, 2007 at 8:56 pm
[...] is built upon very fragile browser cookies. This topic has been examined in deep detail by Benjamin Edelman and discussed on many blogs and forums over the years. Recently ShoeMoney had an interesting blog [...]
November 9, 2008 at 5:41 am
Yes it is essential to know which program to buy. There are lots of them nowadays.
December 26, 2008 at 3:01 am
how i wish there was some kind of Internet police with real fines for different "highwaymen" all over the world! unfortunately this is just my dream, though that i blieve in some 15 years it will come true!
December 29, 2008 at 6:24 am
Protect and clean your PC.
When searching for an antispyware scanner that will protect and clean your PC it can get a little confusing. There are so many available it’s hard to know which one will work the best. If you’re like me, you’ve probably tried a variety of them all and found they basically all find the same types of bugs. Through my experimenting I’ve found that the antispyware solution from Search-and-destroy at (http://www.Search-and-destroy.com/antispyware.htm...works the best. Search-and-destroy Antispyware cleans and protects my computer just as good as any scanner, it gets rid of those nasty bugs and it does it all for less than many of the others available.
March 9, 2009 at 4:58 am
Wow, great post, I was completely unaware of that… I've been using Anti-Spyware software for a long time and own a blog about them. I think that private labeling is a viable alternative.
April 6, 2009 at 2:55 pm
wow thanks i really wasnt aware of that. I work with cookies everyday.
April 6, 2009 at 2:58 pm
I personally think the internet may need policing.
May 20, 2009 at 4:20 pm
I agree this needs to be policed i had no idea. Good post
May 26, 2009 at 6:14 am
Thanks for the post !
I don't understand one thing, how do we run an antispyware program or anti virus program in safe mode ?
June 26, 2009 at 2:01 pm
40-50% of the transactions occur on day 1
so, 50-60% happen several days after.
July 10, 2009 at 4:48 am
Nice site actually. Gone to my favourites. Thanks for creation.
July 14, 2009 at 8:02 am
An always restructured anti spy software program will obviously save you from the worst and most annoying consequences…thanks for posting this blog
August 1, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Nice site actually.
August 16, 2009 at 3:14 pm
nice site for me
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