Google 3rd Party Cookie

[krich1512]

Hey Fast Laners!

What's going on guys? I'm in the process of creating an affiliate program so my partners can help me sell more products.. however.. I'm hearing that Google will start disabling 3rd party cookies. Will this stop me from being able to track affiliate sales through their individual links? Are online affiliate networks dead because of this Google policy change?

Thanks,

 

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[c4n]

It could be a huge problem for affiliate networks that rely on third-party cookies.

In-house affiliate tracking, on the other hand, uses "first-party" cookies. For example:

1. user clicks affiliate link: example.com/track?aff=ID
2. affiliate tracking software sets a first-party cookie under example.com
3. after the sale, the customer is redirected to example.com/thank-you-for-purchase which can access the first-party cookie and track the sale

If I would be starting an affiliate program now, I'd buy and install some in-house tracking.

 

[krich1512]

It could be a huge problem for affiliate networks that rely on third-party cookies.

In-house affiliate tracking, on the other hand, uses "first-party" cookies. For example:

1. user clicks affiliate link: example.com/track?aff=ID
2. affiliate tracking software sets a first-party cookie under example.com
3. after the sale, the customer is redirected to example.com/thank-you-for-purchase which can access the first-party cookie and track the sale

If I would be starting an affiliate program now, I'd buy and install some in-house tracking.

Thank you! Right now I'm using AffiliateWP with my Wordpress site. Is this system now obsolete? And who can help create this in-house tracking you speak of?

 

[c4n]

Not familiar with AffiliateWP, but if it's hosted on the same domain name as your store, you should be fine.

As for in-house tracking; I haven't been in the affiliate industry for years so not sure what software is popular now, but I'd search Google for "Affiliate tracking software", "in-house affiliate software" and similar, or wait if someone else here has more recent experience.

 

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[theofficepass]

Heard about it couple of months ago. This was somewhat of an inevitable outcome, and I think most people were already expecting this to happen at some point.