All popular affiliate marketing tracking platforms currently, or at one time, relied heavily on what is known as ‘Pixel Tracking’ as the mechanism to measure the performance of CPA campaigns. This mechanism requires the advertiser to place an image link to a third party on their web site, which allows the reading of cookie information on the consumer’s computer to determine the source of the traffic. As early as 2002, a major shift in the browser and anti-spyware add-on market has been moving toward blocking the ability for third party links to read cookie information. This seriously impacts the accuracy of performance statistics, and in most cases adversely affects the publisher as they are not credited for conversions where third party cookies are blocked. In turn, publishers’ pixels placed with the ad network to fire when a conversion happens do not fire as well. This can equate to up to 30-40% of uncredited conversions. In order to prevent this, Advent uses mechanisms to detect when third party cookies are being blocked, and can take appropriate measures to continue to accurately track the source of a conversion. Additionally, Advent prefers to use other methods of tracking which can avoid the third party problem entirely. Contact a sales rep to see how you may be losing conversions with other networks, or even with the software that you are licensing now.

“So this is only a problem if you use analytics software running on another company’s website which sets a cookie through yours — a third-party cookie. Tracking repeat visitors by other means, acceptable for audit standards, turns out to be as accurate as third-party cookies. In some cases (such as the insurance site) it may actually be more accurate not to use persistent cookies.” Third Party Cookies are Dead