Affiliate Tracking Made Easy: Your Ultimate Guide

If you want to get started with affiliate marketing with your e-commerce shop or you are already in the middle and asking yourself: "How does affiliate tracking work and what affiliate marketing and tracking methods are actually there?"

Then you are exactly right here, because our guest author and affiliate marketing guru Nawid Company will enlighten you in this article!

What is meant by affiliate tracking?

The tracking for affiliate marketing is the technical foundation & the A and O - not only for a successful Start in affiliate marketing, but also for the long-term control of the channel. The affiliate tracking tracks the clicks, views, sales and accordingly also the commissions from the respective affiliates. This information can be seen in the affiliate network or in the tool.

When you set up an affiliate partner program, you must ensure functioning tracking between the affiliate - affiliate network/the private network solution and your e-commerce shop or your digital product.

Source: nextlevel.sl

An explanation of affiliate marketing management and related tools as well as a list of pros and cons of affiliate marketing management can be found in our ContentHub.

In this article, we focus on affiliate tracking with an affiliate network. With affiliate tracking, you make sure that sales are reported to the affiliate network so that affiliates can see the generated sales in their affiliate dashboard and be compensated for their advertising performance.

At the same time, the merchant can trace both the sources and the sales attributed to the affiliate channel.

When implementing the affiliate tracking of affiliate programs, a distinction is made between conversion tracking and container tags, which are also called mastertags in some networks.

What does that mean?

When setting up and controlling the affiliate program in a network or with a network, it must be ensured first and foremost that the sales made are relayed to the affiliate network. It is mandatory, depending on the type of tracking, to install conversion tracking on your order confirmation page if it is

• cookie tracking 
• or a server request that transmits the conversion via postback to the network
• it is about server 2 server tracking.

We'll discuss the importance and function of conversion tracking in the next part. 

Let's briefly look at the container tags or mastertags: 

Additional scripts from the network or from the publishers can be loaded via the container tags or mastertags, which you (the merchant) must approve. A common example would be the retargeting container tags of retargeting publishers or a user journey tracking of the network.

In some cases, there is an additional first-party cookie script that allows the network to set a first-party cookie and does not depend on third-party cookies. Some networks also solve this with the mastertag.

What are the advantages of affiliate tracking?

Affiliates, merchants (e-commerce shops, your digital product or service) and networks can communicate with each other in real time. The tracking implementation allows the merchant to pass the orders/sales generated by the affiliates to the affiliate network in real time, so that the affiliate can optimize his traffic.

This is especially important when affiliates are buying media buying traffic for your partner program. One example would be the SEA publisher. By passing him the conversions, he can scale the converting keywords in his campaigns by increasing his bid and switching off the keywords that don't convert. Media buying traffic sources that play a role in the affiliate channel include:

• Product listing ads
• Search ads
• Display and retargeting 
• as well as native ads

The affiliate tool generates individual tracking links for each affiliate using a deep link generator or link builder, which the publisher uses when controlling your advertising campaigns. This makes relevant KPIs, such as views, clicks, CTR, conversions, cost per click, etc., visible and easily measurable via the affiliate network. In addition or again, the publisher can store his conversion tracking in the network and gets the conversion transmitted to his own campaign management/in his publisher account.

Another advantage is that all the affiliates' billing is handled via the network. The merchants simply get an invoice from the network. The network as an interface takes over the payout of the publishers and thus the administrative effort of both parties, so that they have more time to focus on the strategic optimization of the advertising campaigns.

For whom is affiliate tracking useful?

For all shop operators and merchants who want to work with a large number of affiliates, an affiliate network or tool is the easiest way to scale affiliate activities and gather all parties in a direct and indirect sense of the word under one roof.

Tracking manually via UTM parameters and creating manual reports is often inaccurate, time-consuming and therefore not recommended. With affiliate tracking, each transaction is precisely recorded and accurately assigned to the affiliate who led the customer to the web shop.

An important aspect in affiliate marketing is attribution. Most often, the attribution model "last click wins" or "last cookie wins" is used. This means that the last click or cookie before a sale or a direct organic request is taken into account and paid for. However, affiliate networks also offer granular attribution models, so that assistant conversions can also be paid for. This provides a more detailed insight into the contribution of each affiliate to the sales process.

What should be considered in affiliate tracking? 

As explained briefly above, there are various types of affiliate tracking:

• Cookie tracking
• Server-2-server tracking aka server-side tracking, also briefly called s2s

In addition, most affiliate networks offer fingerprint tracking - in case the main tracking method should not work.

The classic affiliate tracking is primarily based on conversion tracking, which you install on the order confirmation page. 

You should make sure that the dynamic parameters of the conversion tracking code are completely filled. You should always pass on an order number and the net shopping cart value. Pay attention to the net shopping cart value that the shipping costs are also deducted. We also recommend that if your tool partners offer it, to pass on the coupon code in the conversion tracking so that you get all the information when clearing sales in the network and thus only pay for sales where only the coupons provided to the affiliate channel have been redeemed and not perhaps those from your own influencer campaigns etc.

Little tip for conversion tracking: You can also technically implement and compensate different events differently, e.g.

• commission for new customers
• commission for existing customers
• commission for selected products etc.

You know the problem with Facebook or SEA: conversions are conversions.

The nice thing about affiliate marketing is that you can either pay out between new and existing customers or between different product groups individual commission. Check whether your shop system can technically convey these distinctions, then you can implement this in your affiliate program using different events or event pixels. With Shopify, for example, it is super easy to implement.

So far, we have discussed conversion tracking.

In addition to this, you must install a first-party tracking or mastertag in your webshop. But why?

As more and more browsers are banning the use of third-party cookies, almost every affiliate network is using a first-party cookie script. Here, when the user's entry point is reached, a script from the network is loaded onto your shop, which validates the cookies of the respective network.

Since you are processing data with conversion tracking and want to share it with a third party, it is important that you store your affiliate tracking in the consent manager tool, also known as CMP, of your shop. If you want to do retargeting via the affiliate channel, you should install the network's container tags or mastertags.

Container tags or mastertags are a JavaScript code where the affiliate network can add certain tags after consultation and approval. These tags can then load the scripts of the retargeting publishers or scripts of on-page publishers to label your users who navigate in the shop and leave the shop without purchasing.

Which affiliate tracking methods are there?

There are currently some tracking methods. However, a combination of different tracking methods is usually offered to ensure that the transaction can be cleanly tracked. We describe the different methods by importance or relevance. It is important to understand that pixel tracking, which is currently used by most merchants, will gradually be replaced by server-side tracking, so we strongly recommend that you switch to server-side tracking.

Cookie tracking

This is still the most common tracking method, which is used by the majority of shop operators to date. In this case, a cookie with the tracking information of the network and the affiliate as well as the advertising material is stored in the customer's browser as soon as you click on the advertising material displayed or linked by the affiliate. Here, too, we distinguish between third-party and first-party cookies.

A third-party cookie means that a foreign domain (third domain) has set the cookie, while a first-party cookie is set by the shop's domain.

Source: https://wsmcompass.com/

Source: oracle.com

Due to changes in browser privacy policies, more and more third-party cookies are being blocked. In this context, we refer to the Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) - “Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) is a feature of Apple's Safari web browser. It's designed to improve the privacy for Safari users by blocking third-party cookies (aka trackers) that identify and track users across different websites” -, one of the tightens that Apple has signaled the slow end of cookies when using the Safari browser. The other browsers will gradually follow this trend.

Due to browser adjustments, almost all common affiliate networks have switched to first-party tracking. This has worked reasonably well to date.

The current tightening of browsers has also severely restricted first-party cookie tracking. We observe in some cases - especially with very high iOS traffic - that Safari and the iOS operating system block more and more first-party cookies even before the declared 7 days.

Therefore, we advise you to switch to server-side tracking as soon as possible.

Server-side tracking 

As the name suggests, server-side tracking stores information server-side and also passes it on to the respective affiliate network server-side. The advantage is that ad blockers and browsers (ITP problem) cannot intercept or block the tracking. Server-side tracking is the most accurate way to track and should replace pixel tracking as an industry standard by 2024 at the latest.

In server-side tracking, also known as server-to-server tracking or s2s tracking, the tracking information is stored server-side and some of this information is forwarded to third parties via your own tag container. The advantage is that you first have data sovereignty and you can decide which data you want to transmit. Server-side tracking will become the industry standard by 2024 and replace pixel tracking. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you switch your tracking to server-side tracking if you haven't already done so. Google originally wanted to stop supporting third-party cookies by 2023, but recently changed this and extended the deadline by one year. Nevertheless, we will see a development similar to Apple with Google. At first it will be third-party cookies, then the duration of the first-party cookies will be limited and in the end we can no longer guarantee exact tracking.

Source: hoydigital.com

Backup tracking methods

In case the tracking methods described above do not work or fail, most networks have developed backup tracking methods to replace tracking losses. It is important to understand that these methods vary from network to network; but their logic is based on the same principle.

Fingerprint tracking

Since affiliate networks capture very many users via their redirect servers, this data is used to generate a fingerprint for each user. Various metrics are saved here, which are then summarized in the end to assign the user to a click and a conversion. 

What metrics can this be?

Each affiliate tool has its own metrics, but the most common ones are:

• Operating system and version.
• Browser and version.
• Screen resolution.
• Language.
• Graphics card.
• Processor.
• In total, they are usually 30 to 40 metrics.

This fingerprint is passed on to the network via the conversion pixel on the order confirmation page and tried to match. This is a common fallback method; especially in the current situation where cookie tracking can no longer be guaranteed 100% due to ad blockers and browsers. The problem is that such sales are not traceable via Google Analytics and the respective metric differs from network partner to network partner.

Session tracking

A web shop visit is also referred to as a session. With session tracking, you can exactly assign these visitors, but also only this one visit, to a visitor. Since most user journeys are longer than one session, this is a fallback solution, but not really functional. If the user closes the browser and then visits the site again next time, the session is no longer active and therefore cannot be tracked.

Therefore, it is important that your main tracking methods work cleanly so that such fallback methods ideally do not need to be used at all.

Due to the browser restrictions, the proportion of fingerprint sales is growing, as most advertisers still work with cookie tracking. That's why we would like to emphasize once again: The only method to guarantee a clean main tracking is to switch to server-side tracking.

Conclusion: Which affiliate platforms are recommended?

From our point of view, from a technical perspective, affiliate platforms make sense that make it easy for you to be prepared and user-friendly for the future. In this context, you, as a merchant or advertiser, are the user.

In general, as a merchant or decision-maker, you would also need to consider the GEOs, the vertical, the publisher portfolio of the networks and perform a benchmark analysis for the network suitable for your shop and the vertical to make a final decision.

After this article here, we hope that everyone has the same basic understanding of tracking. The affiliate platforms should serve us as a technical service provider and marketplace for affiliates and make the work as comfortable as possible for the merchant or the agency.

What do we mean by that?

• Good reporting.
• A marketplace where you can find the right affiliates.
• Tracking.
• Good APIs to easily transfer data to your systems.
• Plugins that allow you to quickly integrate the tracking.

The topic of affiliate tracking is constantly changing, and each affiliate platform has to deploy people to meet this challenge and work on it every day. In recent years, we have noticed fundamental changes in our industry and therefore recommend two platforms from our own experience that are working on the challenges of tomorrow and trying to make the work for us shop operators as convenient as possible.

On the one hand, we recommend the  plug-in integrations from  ADCELL and Webgainswhich make it easy - without a lot of technical understanding - to integrate the tracking via a plug-in into your shop.

• ADCELL offers plug-in integration for every common shop system. With  Webgains
• there is currently a Shopify plug-in .Both platforms offer a marketplace where you can find the right affiliates.Which platform suits you, you should simply find out in a direct conversation with the providers. It always depends, as already briefly mentioned above, on the vertical as well as the publisher wishes you have.

These are currently the most popular affiliate network tools on OMR Reviews: Affiliate-Netzwerke-Tools auf OMR Reviews:

ADCELL

Webgains

Awin

100partnerprogramme.de

lead alliance

CJ

TradeTracker

financeAds