[ecomcity]

Well Todd that might have been the original idea. In December 1998 I had to call Darchan to get him to explain the confusing 1 sentence of help regarding return day cookies. If I recall they weren't even called that, and he walked me through how to set it from 1 to 45 days. But then again I might be getting senile. http://abw.infopop.cc/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif Did any of the other cookie issue history and the driving force behind demands for return day cookies stike a familar cord? Especially the parts about why your confused and stat blinded on how shoppers shop vs how networks report sales in favor of sesson only affiliates.

PS; I'll dare you Todd to ever find me slamming CJ in 11240 posts for poor tracking as I'm probably the only affiliate here who checks my CJ stats every other day. So I'm not a CJ detractor and wish you'd be all you set out to be without the fresh cookie stuffing tricksters and acting as recruiters for the session only incent BHO's. As a pro return day cookie network how come you introduced a hidden 1 occurance only field for merchants eliminating all return day benefits? Fair question as you've enter the No-Spin Zone of affiliate marketing.

[SSanf]

Mike, those posts were well written and easy to follow. http://abw.infopop.cc/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[abestwebas]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jeff_Kowabunga:
I do not know the exact percentage of orders that take place on return days, though I did see a LinkShare presentation during the last Affiliate Summit that used data from one merchant showing it was about 72%. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

In other words, this is saying a small percent of sales (28%) occur on the initial click - not the huge 90%+ that CJ and LS are claiming.

[happypoon]

My experience shows that cookie sales are a huge percent of my sales.

Anyone remember that time when thmedia servers went down for a day and half or so? I was appauled at the earnings loss "I thought" I was losing and was very frustrated. You can't imagine my surprise when I checked my sales after I got back online and still had over 100 sales show up while I was down. Each of those sales were from a cookie as my server was down all fricking day and night. Unfortunately I had down time another time but experienced the same thing, it was after these times that I really realized the value of a cookie and could estimate the amount of cookie sales I was getting. The sales on these days hardly looked below normal and I was shocked to realize how few of my sales were being reported in real time by first clicks.

I had always questioned the "90% of sales occur on the first click" crap which IMO has been pushed on us for years to help networks validate "we aint getting so screwed by parasites since they wont mess with the initial click" - but folks, it aint so. The protection of the first click only provides a minimal amount of protection IMO but you can bet they don't want this to be pointed out!

The other side of that smoke and mirrors is now the statements made lately - "if they have cookies turned off" they aren't shopping. Thats absurd IMO! Many people value their privacy and just because they block cookies or wash them has nothing to do with if they shop or not IMO. Most of the technical people I know have there cookie turned off and they spend a great seal of time and MONEY online. I'm sure the networks would like you to believe that the cookie blocking issues are not real important just as they want you to believe that the COC provides you protection since so many sales occur on the initial click. unnh huh right.

My experience both as a consumer and as an affiliate looking at sales when my server was down all day do not validate what they say and would like you to believe at all!

[ToddCrawford]

I think we need to define what a session is so we are all looking at the same information the same way. Some consider a session the time from the click until the visitor leaves the site or closes the browser. Some consider it 20 minutes after the click, as long as the visitor doesn't close the window or leave the site.

Either way, sessions can be impacted by opening a link on the site in a new window. I am not sure what else could affect (break) the session - maybe others can provide some input.

[Jeff_Converseon]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>I think we need to define what a session is so we are all looking at the same information the same way. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Todd is correct, there is no standard definition of what a "session" is. It depends entirely on the context of the browsing experience and even what server software you are using.
For instance, if you are talking about a session in terms of the Microsoft server software, it is by default a 20 minute special cookie that is written to a user's browser by the server. It will disappear before that 20 minutes is up if the user leaves the site. It will also disappear if the domain you are visiting is being served from a cluster of servers (for load balancing) and you happen to load a page from a different server on that domain. It will also not be stored in the first place if a user has cookies disabled.
A "session" could also be stored instead in the query string of the URL as you navigate through a given site. This session would stay intact without a cookie as long as didn't leave the site.

[Rhea]

I went into my CJ stats for July to compare click dates to transaction dates.

I found that while only 14% of my transactions did not occur on the click date they represent 20% of my commissions.

My average sale amount for clickdate=saledate is $43.81, while sales that did not occur on the click date average $79.35.

[Jeff_Converseon]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> I found that while only 14% of my transactions did not occur on the click date they represent 20% of my commissions. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This is probably the case across all networks; the higher the price of the item, the longer it takes for a consumer to make a decision. There are certainly cases where first click results in a high ticket item being purchased, but that is certainly the exception to the rule.

[Infoseeker]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rhea:
I went into my CJ stats for July to compare click dates to transaction dates.

I found that while only 14% of my transactions did not occur on the click date they represent 20% of my commissions.

My average sale amount for clickdate=saledate is $43.81, while sales that did not occur on the click date average $79.35. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Where can you do that in the cj interface. I looked and can't find where you can compare click dates to transaction dates. Thanks!!

[Rhea]

Hey Infoseeker, the only way you can see your click date data is if you export the file. For some reason that field is suppressed in the online transaction file. Just pull up a report for whatever date range you want and export it to a file. When you open the file on your computer you'll see a column called "Click Date".

[Infoseeker]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rhea:
Hey Infoseeker, the only way you can see your click date data is if you export the file. For some reason that field is suppressed in the online transaction file. Just pull up a report for whatever date range you want and export it to a file. When you open the file on your computer you'll see a column called "Click Date". <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hi Rhea,
How do you do that. I went to the performance section and I see save it in a CSV file. What is that? LOL

[Rhea]

PMing you. http://abw.infopop.cc/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[happypoon]

I'm curious... Do networks spout off figures such as "90% of sales occur on the initial click" or "affiliates are provided a great deal of protection by the COC since parasites do not interfere with the initial click thru" when they can't define what the initial click is? Hmmmmm.

The issue I have with quotes such as above and reasons to suspect the statements validity are even clearer. I really don't understand how qualifying the issues I presented and asked for clarification on require the terms for a session to be defined at all?

[Donuts]

Wow, that darn hurricane had me strapped down and I missed all this great follow up to my original question!!!! Didn't even read all the posts yet (limping along with intermittent Internet and power...)

Look forward to reading this whole thread once my town gets closer to normal...

Donuts Quixote rides on!!!

...

[ToddCrawford]

happypoon,

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Do networks spout off figures such as "90% of sales occur on the initial click" or "affiliates are provided a great deal of protection by the COC since parasites do not interfere with the initial click thru" when they can't define what the initial click is? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
The intitial click is easy to determine. We were discussing how to define a session. A session occurs/begins after the initial click.

[~Michelle]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by ToddCrawford, CJ.com:
Either way, sessions can be impacted by opening a link on the site in a new window. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Please tell me you are joking on this!

Most people I know who are shopping, when presented with a page full of relevant products will right click and choose to open the link to the individual product in a new window so that they don't have to mess around going back and forth, they can just either add it to their cart and close the window and be back at the main results, or if not interested, close the window and be back at the results.

Isn't there a way to insure this does not happen?

[ecomcity]

Michelle this is the exact new window procedure where the the deal/coupon/rebate sites and all the incent BHO's come into play. The search bar hijackers scew the comparision shopping results, The BHO's pop in unison, the Google coupon Yellow pages kick into gear, and the original shopper friendly referring site gets thrown to the commission curb by the incent Adwhores. They are easy to spot at ABW as they laugh at all legit affiliates displaying their higher conversion ratios as their sites have to pre-sell nothing. Just list a hyped up, often phoney, incent. CJ -BF and LS all know this and lump them, and the BHO's, into one incent Adwhore basket.

[smesser]

Hi all,

I hope you all had a great weekend. Outside of the Yanks on Friday that got killed (which sucked), one of the most magnificent lightning storms I have seen in years (which was incredible), and one of the most amazing days (weather-wise) on Sunday I hope you all enjoyed the weekend.

I see that a lot of continued discussion has been going on in my absence. I will need a little bit to get up to speed on the discussion, and I hope that you will pardon me participating intermittently. I had not anticipated this discussion last week and thus I have other scheduled meetings today. I will thus be in and out of this discussion today.

In the meantime, I see that Jeff has joined (welcome!) to help Todd answer some of the questions. Since he has joined, I would welcome his answer to my first question. Jeff, perhaps you could let everyone know if my statement was accurate without going into any other extended and potentially confusing statements. I think for everyone else's sake a simple yes its accurate will do for now. We will explore all the other issues next, but one at a time would be best not to confuse everyone. I think all this election talk has already given me enough spin heartburn for one year.

Best regards,
Stephen

[ecomcity]

http://66.132.187.8/smilies/popcorn.gif Okie-Dookie

[Jeff_Converseon]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Jeff, perhaps you could let everyone know if my statement was accurate without going into any other extended and potentially confusing statements. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Sorry, not sure what statement you mean...it's been a pretty long thread.

[Kellie aka Ms. B]

Someone send up a red flag when we are ready for new questions/issues in this thread. I have a couple. http://abw.infopop.cc/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

[smesser]

Jeff,

The first question I asked in the thread with regards to a user who shuts off cookies.

Let me know if that helps.

Steve

[smesser]

Jeff, here is the repost, Please disregard my sarcasm, I needed a dose of relaxation at the time of this posting and my frustration came out (unwarranted against todd):

Todd,

Glad you choose to participate, I am not sure if you really want this out in the public but now that you have asked let me start the lesson.

Lets start at the beginning of a tracked transaction: The initial click and sale, is as everyone knows and can read in their own stats is where the vast majority of transactions take place (with unique merchants sometimes an exception). I have seen third party stats that show the number exceeds 90%, and our numbers suggest that it may even be higher.

So why don't we just start here and then continue to other scenarios. Lets not confuse everyone Todd by trying to take separate events and try to tie them together. In this, the most likely scenario, if you or any user where to shut off their cookies and click on a CJ (read any cookie based technology) and make a purchase. CJ would not track any of the sales. Read that as a loss factor of 100%. If that same user where to click on a LinkShare link with their cookies shut off, then every sale would be captured.

So lets take a basic math assumption:
1,000 shoppers
10% with cookies shut off
$100 avg sale
10% commission paid by merchant in example

Total sales through CJ link would be $100,000 and the commission earned should have been $10,000 but because 100 users had cookies shut off the affiliate was left $1,000 shall we say light in the wallet.

Under the exact same scenario using LinkShare technology, the affiliate would have earned the full $10,000 and not the $9,000 dollars.

Now imagine that over the last few years and over all these affiliates.

Todd, if this inaccurate so far. Please enlighten me and anyone else who knows technology on this portion of the tracking. Perhaps in Santa Barbara technology works differently then everywhere else. Once you have agreed, which technically unless you are misleading people here you have to do, I will continue to lay out all the other scenarios. I will continue even though this alone proves I am right and that the failure, in my opinion, costs non LinkShare affiliates a huge amount of money. I look forward to your response.

Steve

[ToddCrawford]

If a user shuts off cookies...

I did a quick check of 86 LinkShare clients (listed as featured clients) and 71% require cookies in order for their shopping cart to allow purchases to be processed.

My methodology for my quick little unscientific study is as follows:

1) Visit their site with my browser set to not allow any cookies.
2) Add an item to my cart.
3) Keep shopping.
4) Add another item to my cart.
5) Proceed to check out.

If both items were present then I assumed the site did not require cookies. Otherwise I assumed that it did.

I think we all need to acknowlwdge that if cookies get turned off so does e-commerce.

[Jeff_Converseon]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>So lets take a basic math assumption:
1,000 shoppers
10% with cookies shut off
$100 avg sale
10% commission paid by merchant in example

Total sales through CJ link would be $100,000 and the commission earned should have been $10,000 but because 100 users had cookies shut off the affiliate was left $1,000 shall we say light in the wallet.

Under the exact same scenario using LinkShare technology, the affiliate would have earned the full $10,000 and not the $9,000 dollars. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

OK, I'll assume this is the post you are referring to.

Steve is right in the assumption that a system that uses cookies exclusively to track sales will not track any sales where the users have cookies disabled. I would hope there is no confusion there.

However, your "basic math assumption" guessing that 10% of users have cookies off is not a good assumption. As I stated in an earlier post, our research shows that less than 1% of users have cookies off. If you consider the average user -- our friends and family who "log on to the internet" every once in a while using AOL, and who have never heard of cookies -- this stat rings true to me. Add the fact that most major shopping and content sites use cookies to keep you logged in or maintain session state (including many LinkShare merchants, I'm sure), it can be extremely difficult to navigate the web as an average user with cookies disabled.

You can find other sites that claim higher "cookies off" percentage, but those are usually tech savvy sites testing their own visitors, who are much more afraid of being tracked and turn cookies off, thus skewing the results. If a merchant is catering exclusively to a tech savvy audience, it may make sense for them to avoid using cookies to track. However, these users are also much more likely to recognize an affiliate link and bypass it, so it all may be moot at that point.

Let's assume 1% have cookies off (though it is lower in our research). Let's further assume that 80% of sales occur on the first visit. A quick comparison, then:

LinkShare 1,000 visits, 10 cookies off, 2 of those purchase after the first click and are not tracked by LinkShare.

CJ (assuming cookie tracking), 1,000 visits, 10 with cookies off who are not tracked by CJ.
Overall, LinkShare tracks 8 more visits out of 1,000 than CJ - 0.8%.

However, that is not the end of the debate. LinkShare's tracking will only work if the merchant's system is holding the affiliate id correctly, passing it through their system correctly, and getting that id into the reporting to LinkShare correctly. CJ's system, I'm assuimng, (and KowaBunga's default system) just requires a tracking pixel on the final page of the ordering system. If more than 0.8% of sales are lost by LinkShare's merchants sites not operating correctly, then CJ would track more users.

Finally, if the user has Norton's Internet Security installed on the default settings (or another similar application), neither the LinkShare nor CJ's links would ever been clicked on in the first place, as they would have been erased from the affiliate's site. In that scenario -- if I may say so -- only a tracking system like KowaBunga's that has a solution for that would track anything. Our policy is to allow any tracking that the merchant requests, whether it be a LinkShare style or CJ style or a hybrid, as the final point here is that there is no "perfect" trackiing solution. It is ALWAYS a balance. And I truly think the affiliates here need not worry about this too much. As I said previously, all providers want links to be tracked. It is not in anyone's best interest to miss an affiliate transaction. It's one of the beauttiful things about this entire business model, in my opinion -- in most cases the afiliate, merchant, and provider all benefit from the same goals.