Web Affiliate Marketing Blog

No idea, it seems a very starnge thing to do. If, as they claim, it has very little impact then why change it? If they are deduplicating correctly across all channels then it is not possible that there is another referrer in that time, therefore there is a strong argument to say that the affiliate is responsible for driving that sale.

James, without addressing the rights or wrongs of what the merchant has done, it seems they have brought their cookie length in line with what would appear to be a standard cookie length on the Affiliate Future platform – 30 days.

One possible reason is that the cookie window needs to correspond with other advertising channels. Affiliate marketing rarely stands alone but is part of an overall advertising mix. The allocation of a marketing budget is based on results, therefore like for like reporting is needed in order to make that decision.

Not saying that’s the reason for this particular merchant, just one possible reason of course.

I din’t know about other retailers but our stats show 95.18% same day sales and 0.79% over 30days.
This seems to suggest the length of cookie is completely irrelavant either way, since 30 days covers over 99% I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it, 30 days just seems a reasonable period to allow.

Chris, the only real reason is to save money although this is more a problem for merchants that have perpetual voucher codes giving say £5 off £20, obviously a sale at or near the base £20 would constitute a loss to the merchant. With a 30 day cookie they at least have the possibility of the customer coming back for a full price or commissionless sale and so make up some of the loss on the first sale.
A lot of customers visit and buy once or twice a year only depending on the seasonality of products and the only way for affiliates to benefit from repeat orders would be to have a 365 day cookie, no merchant would want such a long commitment to commission. If they had voucher code directories as affiliates, they could be in a situation of paying commission perpetualy, certainly not a formula for staying in business.
There has to be a balance between rewarding the affiliate and making a profit, now that we have a private program we will be experimenting with various combinations of cookie and commission, based on feedback from affiliates (and reading blogs like this).

I can see both sides of it, the email and reason they sent were definitely unreasonable and to be fair the point you made stands, if its such a marginal number why cut it off?

From a merchants point of view I can see why they would want to make a 30 day limit, I do (if I step out of the bias) think 30 days is reasonable but still it’s shifting goalposts and not on at all.

I’ve read all the comments, and most seem to be from the affiliate or merchant point of view.
Suppose a customer buys something from MerchantA. The transaction goes well and 35 daus later they decide to buy something from the same company.
Are they more likely to remember the website they clicked through to get to the merchant or the name of the merchant themselves printed on the receipts etc from the last time they used them? I reckon the latter.
By the customer direct clicking on the MerchantA’s website, the affiliate is out of the loop all together with an improved profit margin for the merchant. Perhaps that’s why one major merchant has cut their cookie period to 24 hours!