Affiliate Marketing India Classroom

Conditional Tracking

2009-01-13T02:03:00.000-08:00

This is quite a possible scenario that an advertiser is promoting a product on multiple channels e.g. on affiliate, on search engine, on ad network or any other channel. And this is also quite possible that user might land to advertiser’s site passing through many channels. For example say a user first comes through an affiliate channel but doesn’t perform any action and later on might come through search engine and does some action this time. Now search engine will claim this sale as well as the affiliate and advertiser might land up paying twice for a single sale and the true effectiveness of any particular channel will never come out.

To overcome this kind of situation advertiser can define their set of rules such as last referrer (search engine in above example), or first referrer (affiliate in above example) wins the sale, or the sale will be distributed among all channels.

In conditional tracking advertiser sets its own cookie specific to the particular channel and fires the tracking code accordingly, to track the sales from that channel. E.g. an advertiser is having association with 2 channels say search engine and affiliate network. Now merchant will its set parameters such as referrer or source (it could be any) in the destination URL. So the URL would look like http://www.advertiser.com/?source=Affiliate for traffic coming from affiliate channel or http://www.advertiser.com/?source=search-engine for traffic coming from search engine. Now whenever user clicks on any banner or any link, this parameter (source) is captured at advertisers end and the tracking code specific to that channel only is fired as per the rule set by advertiser (first referrer or last referrer).

Cookie vs. Session Tracking

2009-01-13T01:25:00.000-08:00

The type of tracking plays an important part whenever it comes to evaluating the true effectiveness of any particular marketing channel. Although most of the users complete the action in the same session yet this is quite possible that a user comes on any merchant’s website through any affiliate website but doesn’t purchase anything at that instant and comes later on through bookmarks or may be any search engine and completes the action. To track this behaviour cookie based tracking comes into picture. The two types are explained below:

• Cookie based tracking: as explained in the above diagram, a user might come on merchant’s website through affiliate site (a cookie is set in user’s browser at this instant) however doesn’t purchase or perform any action at that instant. But he might come later on through search engine or directly and completes the action this time. This action is recorded by the tracking code on thank you page in assistance with cookie residing in user’s browser.

• Session based tracking: the lifecycle of a Session is bounded by the beginning and end of a logical transaction. Now suppose a user clicks on any AD running on an affiliate website and lands on merchant’s website and completes some action (filling any form or purchasing something) and lands on thank you page. Session tracking is also a type of cookie based tracking wherein the cookie duration is equal to the session the user stays on merchant website.

Cookie and It’s Role In Affiliate Marketing

2009-01-06T23:04:00.000-08:00

What is a Cookie?
Cookie is a small text file which is set in user’s browser whenever any action (impression or click) happens on creative. This is used for tracking purpose. In context of affiliate marketing, this file contains information such as affiliate ID, merchant ID, creative ID, IP address, click date, sale date for reporting purpose etc. The cookie duration, post which the cookie gets expired, is flexible and can be set by affiliate network as per the merchants consent.

Post Impression (PI) Cookie & Post Click Cookie
Post impression cookie is set whenever a banner is served from the affiliate network’s server to affiliate’s website. Its duration is normally two days as per the global norms. So, the sales/leads happening within the two days time duration will be attributed to the affiliate.

This cookie comes into picture considering the fact that user might have seen the banner on any affiliate website and might visit merchant website again through search engine or directly, later within two days.

PI cookie is undoubtedly in favour of affiliates however merchants might lose their sales happening via other channels causing them cost a single sale twice and hence lowering the effectiveness of other channel.

PI cookie is now hardly supported by any affiliate network. DGM is the only network that supports PI cookie. So, it is kind of obsolete now and merchants have also started realising the pitfalls of PI cookie.

Post click cookie is set whenever a user clicks on a banner. The duration of the click cookie is normally 30 days to 45 days. For gambling merchants it can be up to 999 days.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

2009-01-04T22:36:00.000-08:00

The complete process as how affiliate marketing works, is illustrated in the flow chart given below.

Affiliate Marketing Basics

2009-01-01T22:24:00.000-08:00

In simple words affiliate marketing is an internet marketing practice in which an affiliate is rewarded with a preset commission by advertiser whenever a user is referred from affiliate website to merchant website and user purchases something or completes any action. Here action could be a registration or newsletter signup. So, affiliate is only paid when any sale happens or an action is completed; which is why affiliate marketing is also termed as performance market.

Parties involved and their roles
The whole affiliate marketing concept revolves around three key players as listed below.
1. Merchant/Advertiser: the party that want to promote or market their product.
2. Affiliate is the party that actually do the marketing for a merchant through their website, various online marketing activities. Based on the marketing activity followed by affiliates they can be categorized as:

Email marketing affiliate: these affiliates promote merchant’s product through email marketing. These affiliates have their own database to which they send very targeted and converting e-mailers.
PPC Affiliates: these affiliates promote merchant’s product through search engine marketing i.e. paid ads on Google, Yahoo, MSN and other popular search engines. These affiliates send very highly targeted traffic. PPC affiliates either create a single page for lead capturing or they create comparison website providing comparison among various products and hence giving consumers the flexibility to choose between the best, suiting to their requirement.
Display Affiliates: affiliates having big websites with huge traffic come under this category.
Loyalty/Cash Back Affiliates: these are special type of affiliates that pay consumers with the benefit of cash in return if they purchase or refer some to purchse via their website. They provide the complete reporting to their consumers wherein they can check the commission earned.
SEO affiliates: these affiliates promote through SEO on various search engine such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
Social media marketing affiliates: these affiliate promote merchants product using many social activities such as blogs, social communities , online forums and email groups.

3. Affiliate Network is the third party player that sits in between merchant and an affiliate. Both merchant and affiliate signup with an affiliate. Both the parties have to rely on affiliate network for reporting purpose. Both are provided with a panel wherein they can check reports and do other activities such as approving affiliate, applying to a program, take banner codes etc. The role of an affiliate network includes:

Providing technology to track end to end user activity
Reporting
Affiliate recruitment and management
Affiliate support
Banner serving space to advertiser