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Pixel tracking, which is a very old way of doing things, comes into play when the success/thank you page is controlled by a 3rd party. If I'm running and affiliate network and I have 100 merchants under it which I have no control over I need to ask them to put a "pixel" on their thank you page which will inform my network software that a sale occurred.
This is not the best way of tracking things as there are lots of things that can go wrong and lots of ways to mess with it. It is best to have the processor who is processing the sale notify the software of all transactions, which is what we do with NATS and what most in adult do. This is much more reliable and accurate. The adult industry in this respect is doing way better than mainstream. The requirement of doing it this way means that all processors/payment methods/etc. must be fully integrated with the affiliate software. We can do this in adult much more easily than a mainstream network of 100 merchants all processing in their own way could. It would be more cost effective for the affiliate program owner to say "put a pixel on your page that calls a script in my software" rather than invest the time to integrate 100 various systems.
The pixel is not helping to identify that a sale is "yours" in any way. It is simply posting info that a sale happened to the affiliate software/network.
If you are referring to the "pixel" posting back as a way for you, the affiliate, to get info when a sale occurs for your own internal stats/optimization then that is a bit different. NATS v4 can achieve this without the pixel by having NATS post to you when sales/transactions occur (configurable by the program owner).
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