Since the launch of ITP, many affiliate networks have started referring to a ‘full tracking solution’ as a means of solving the problems that tracking prevention has created for the affiliate channel. Up until recently though, this was not a commonly used phrase and certainly not one that many publishers understood. Our aim is to try and turn the complicated into the simple and with that in mind, you can find an explanation of what a full tracking solution is and how it works.
A ‘full tracking solution’ is more commonly known as server to server tracking, which has some similarities with cookie tracking and some important differences:
The similarities:
- Both tracking solutions will attempt to store information about which affiliate referred a user and any relevant information about that user’s environment (such as device, IP range, browser, etc..).
The differences:
- Cookie tracking stores the data referenced above in a cookie on the user’s machine
- Server to server tracking stores the data referenced above on the retailer’s own server
Server to server tracking isn’t really anything new, lots of affiliate networks have made it available for the last ten years but there were few retailers who would integrate in that way. The main reason for this is that it’s a little bit more complicated to do. Retailers would have to work out how to store relevant data on their own servers rather than letting their affiliate network store the data in cookies on user’s machines. In short, going live with an affiliate network was usually cookie based because it was the path of least resistance.
The aforementioned ITP has changed that quite significantly and more retailers are being encouraged to (and in some cases penalised if they don’t) move to server to server tracking. This is hugely important, across both Apple’s Safari and now Firefox, there are some conversions that would be lost through cookie tracking but not by server to server tracking. It’s very difficult to estimate the volumes of lost sales but it does vary quite significantly from publisher to publisher and advertiser to advertiser.
One thing that is absolutely certain is that retailers who are not embracing server to server tracking will find their affiliate volumes dwindling over time. It begs the question though, how can you as a publisher work out if a retailer is using a full tracking solution? The truth is, it’s surprisingly difficult.
The best indicators (which are not fail safe) cover two areas:
The cookies being set are not first party cookies
This requires a publisher to click through on one of their own links and then inspecting how the cookie was set. Specifically, you are looking for “HttpOnly = false” when inspecting the cookie. The logic here is that if a network is setting a first party cookie, they’re unlikely to be doing server to server tracking as well.
There should be a parameter in the URL that looks like a unique identifier for the user
For example, in the URL from Expedia below (after a click from an affiliate site), there is an identifier from both Partnerize and Awin:
These lengthy character strings would be stored by Expedia on their own servers and when a sale happens, they would be passed back to Partnerize and Awin for processing.
There is no getting away from the fact that browsers are taking control of how user privacy is looked after. If any further proof was needed, it was just last month that Apple announced a newer version of ITP (version 2.1) which is going to restrict retailers from storing information about affiliate traffic for more than 7 days. Thankfully, the impact will be quite small since more than 99.1% of affiliate transactions happen within the first seven days of a user landing on a retailer’s site but it’s interesting to see that browsers are starting to take control over what is a ‘reasonable’ amount of time to store data even as simple as where a user came from.
It’s highly likely that server to server will become the norm for affiliate networks globally but it also means that browsers (like Firefox and Safari) will continue to play havoc with iterations of tracking protection that will make it extremely challenging for any solution not tracking in this way.
29 March 2019Affiliate Marketing, Tracking, Server to Server, ITP
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