All Posts Tagged With: "cookies"

Cookies are of paramount importance in the internet advetising space, in fact, I would go so far as to say advertising on the internet could not exist without them. Why? Glad you asked! Cookies are little files of data that get set when you visit a site and are accessible when you return to the site that set them, maybe they do something as innoculous as automatically log you in upon return or maybe they store other information, such as what link you clicked to get there. Regardless, they are there to store bits of data about your browsing history. Alarmed? Probably not if you are reading this blog bug but if you are, as Sun’s Scott McNealy said way back in 1999, “get over it“.

While cookies can help sites track things such as visitation frequency and demographic data they are even more important in the context of affiliate marketing. The cookie indicates which affiliate the visitor arrived through and consequently, who get’s paid if/when the visitor converts. Since visitors may not necessarily convert (buy, sign up, whatever) on the initial visit the affiliate marketer needs window of time with which they can be credited for the action. Typical affiliate ranges could be anywhere from 7 to 90 days or more.

I was browsing the digitalpoint forums and found a user asking about the duration of the eBay Partner Network cookie. I couldn’t find this in their documentation so I did a little experiment. I cleared my browser cookies and went to discountroombas.com, the niche eBay site I plan on experimenting with. I had already implement the RSS widget that populates a list of sales meeting certain keword requirements, in my case roombas.

Anyway the intial niche site set cookies under two domains, with dates ranging from end of session (when I leave the site) all the way through 6/24/2010. It wasn’t until I clicked on an auction link that a cookie corresponding to my affiliate status was set (highlighted in the picture above). In this case the eBay Partner Network cookies was set to expire after 30 days. That meant that if the user that clicked arrived to eBay through my site and either signed up for a new account or placed the winning bid on auction link they clicked on would end up netting me X dollars. Had this visitor joined or won an auction after 31 days I would not get get anything.

Bottom line, if you are working with an affiliate program, check the terms of service. The longer the cookie duration for conversion tracking the better.

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