Moose on the Loose

Yep we still have these neanderthal cookie set ups, come on what kind of stone age set up is that we still see on a couple / few of the “major” networks?

Action Referral Occurrences, this is the number of times an advertiser will pay a commission within the *same* cookie period (ranging from 1 time to unlimited).

Here’s where there is room for confusion.

Many affiliates are make the false assumption that they earn commissions for “all” the sales during the active cookie period. Whereby the cookie gets erased after the first purchase and you don’t get commission on subsequent sales if they go on to purchase further items or services within that origianl cookie duration.

However, this is now metered by the ‘Action Referral Occurrence’ or “Recurring Event” setting. Sometimes it is just an oversight by a merchant but it can basically make you feel short changed.

Certainly if your program is designed to pay for customer acquisition then it’s not so much of a problem. For example With Credit Cards & Betting, however there could quite easily be more than one person in a household who could apply, hence some other programs in the same category do offer unlimited.

But if an merchant is selling their program as an ongoing revenue share for referred customers then they should ensure their action referral occurrence reflects this with appropriate unlimited occurrences.

Ideally any of these merchants listed below should change it to UNLIMITED. Action Referral Occurrences is often overlooked by affiliates so if you have a good relationship with the affiliate manager of any of these programs, it may be an idea to encourage them to change it..

As a suggestion to forum members politely email merchants you work with & explain that their terms of ‘1 time’ sales against long cookie periods weakened their offer to the point that they may not be promoted to their full potential.

How long has this being going on for, well I first posted about it on the forum over 4 years ago, not a whole ot has changed and because it says a certain cookie period or unlimited recurring events, does it actually mean it is? Am I being sceptical? Nope just realistic.

Solution: Deactivate merchant if they won’t listen or change.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 4th, 2008 at 8:00 PM and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.