Cookie Duration Transparency

**Qui Gon Jinn** · 15-12-05

If a cookie is 30 days, should it mean 30 days.

It seems there are programs still around that once the FIRST sale has been generated within a prescribed period the cookie is burnt & that for subsequent further sales within the cookie period affiliates will not get credited any commission.

What are your thoughts on this & should this be clearly labeled?

**LxDirect James** · 15-12-05

I think CJ are pretty clear on this (not sure about others). You get cookie span and reoccurrences. A reoccurrence being the amount of sales available within the cookie period.

(You probably already knew this, so apologies for seeming patronising)

**Fraser** · 15-12-05

I was going to raise this topic in a couple of days once I had waited long enough to make sure that my second sale wasn't going to appear on a particular program!

I totally agree that this should be made clear. On some programs you ocassionally get lucky and a customer makes 6 or 7 orders but on others the cookie seems to be wiped after the first order which doesn't make any sense to me and I would definitely want to know in advance if this was going to happen.

**Itchy** · 15-12-05

Originally Posted by Qui Gon Jinn

If a cookie is 30 days, should it mean 30 days.

It should do what it says on the tin

**pistol101** · 15-12-05

We have a 30 day cookie that last for 30 days regardless of number of uses. There are the odd ifs and buts, but they are in our offer text.

**Supercod** · 15-12-05

I placed loads of sales on a program and only the 1st sale tracked, but says 28 days cookie and nothing in the program information to say it was 1st sale only, very poor was only like £10 in missing commission but that’s not the point. I have asked the Network to find out for me what the case was, not actually that bothered about one off mistakes but when you think a program is one way and it’s actually another then you start to question what else are they not telling you. Please note it could be the Merchant pulling a fast one and nothing to do with the Network, that's why I done the decent thing in saying to them and giving them time to look in to it.

**Qui Gon Jinn** · 15-12-05

With regard to a reoccurance of only 1 (once) this should not be permitted at all. It should always be ALL sales within the WHOLE cookie period so there is no ambiguity what so ever.

What is disheartening is that the topic gets brought up year after year & little is done about it.

**pricethat** · 15-12-05

I know its never going to be possible but i think the whole cookie dependancy needs to be dropped by now anyway. Problem is i guess its too much work for some IT departments to store an affiliate id and reference next to a customers details so if they purchase again it generates sale data in the tag or batch reports them.

ALL programs i ever set up i made sure that they tracked in this method by batch reporting to pair up with the cookie tracking tag tracking, you would be amazed how many sales dont get tracked by the tag alone. More than 40% of repeat purchases... But that aside it only works if the merchant makes customers log back into their existing accounts if they already used them before, i wonder how many sites actually do this.

But your right about cookies, if they do have to be here then at least they can let people know. It seems that the most common thing of all things like this is that we just want to know what the score is, a tick box indicator on the signup page of programs is enough in most cases.