Declined Commissions - Reasons

**darrenw** · 01-10-04

I've just been viewing the "reasons" for declined commissions for the month of September and I came across this rather mysterious one from a particular merchant:

"Refered by our own PPC program"

I don't understand this. My affiliate site sent the traffic to the merchant site via an AW affiliate link, and the visitor made a purchase. So what does this mean?

Cheers,
Darren.

**Graham@Buyagift** · 01-10-04

Sounds like they're classing orders through their own PPC activity and affiliate program as a duplicate order.

Graham

**darrenw** · 01-10-04

Hi,

Thanks for the reply - I'm still having problems understanding this - surely the traffic is coming from either a PPC click, or from my affiliate site, but not both?

**Fraser** · 01-10-04

Maybe they think that their own PPC has higher priority then your affiliate link

i.e. their PPC first shows someone the site and then you bring them back but they claim their PPC was first to introduce them so gets credit.

or the other way round you introduced them to the site and set the cookie but they got the repeat visitor via PPC and now don't want to pay you.

Either way it's a pretty odd situation and I would contact the merchant direct to get them to clarify.

**pistol101** · 01-10-04

Thanks for the reply - I'm still having problems understanding this - surely the traffic is coming from either a PPC click, or from my affiliate site, but not both?

A user may have clicked through your link and not bought, but come back later and gone through the merchants ppc link and then bought.

If they used the same tracking system then the last cookie would have stood.

**D-Mac** · 01-10-04

It could easily be coming from both. We get this all the time - e.g. we can see on the logfiles that somebody clicks on one of our PPC listings, (then presumably returns to the SERPs, then clicks through to an Aff site) then lands on our site again via the Aff where a sale is made.

It seems a bit underhand to cancel the commission for this reason though!

**pistol101** · 01-10-04

It's prob worth adding this happens with sales appearing on 2 networks.

**D-Mac** · 01-10-04

Hi Pete (cheers for yesterday :-) )

I am confused by your explanation, as the merchants own PPC tracking shouldn't use the same cookie...

**pistol101** · 01-10-04

What i was trying to say is that a lot of merchants track their ppc campaigns through the networks. So only one cookie would ever be set.

**D-Mac** · 01-10-04

aha ok - does that mean the network gets their override? Or is it a free service ;-)

**pistol101** · 01-10-04

we do it for free, but if you want to pay yourself a big commission for it so we get an overide feel free to

**darrenw** · 01-10-04

I'm still not quite following this:

My Stats show:

Click: 31/08/04 10:43:06
Transaction: 31/08/04 10:47:45
Declined: 03/09/04 15:17:58

If the visitor had returned to the site via a different affiliate's cookie between 10:43 and 10:47, then my cookie would not have triggered the transaction at 10:47?

Still

**pistol101** · 01-10-04

Hi Darren,

The merchant is using two different tracking methods and thats why it's tracked twice. It's a little cheeky to have cancelled yours as it's probably the last one.

I'd have a chat with the merchant, they probably just need some guidance.

**renegade** · 01-10-04

I'd have a chat with the merchant, they probably just need some guidance.

Do the networks explain this stuff to their merchants - if it's quite complicated even for experienced affiliates to understand you can bet busy merchants are even less likely to validate the commission.