Upcoming IE and FF could erase affiliate cookies!
 

In my Fight the Blog! blog at xbiz:

Microsoft announced last week that it was adding a "porn mode" to its Explorer browser. When enabled, this function will delete history and cookies after the browsing session is over.

Mozilla's FireFox made a similar announcement today that it was going to do the same.

While the idea of being able to clean up your tracks is an understandable point, there is a huge implication to the adult industry.

Cookies that are set from affiliate links would get destroyed. A surfer clicks from the affiliate site to a paysite. When they arrive at the paysite, a cookie is set to give credit to the affiliate should the surfer return back to the site. With the "porn mode", the cookies would end being automatically deleted after the browser session was closed.

With the cookies being destroyed after the surfing session, the affiliates will no longer be able to get credit. If the surfer joins the paysite when they clicked over, then the affiliate will get the credit, but the surfer behavior would be to check out the tour and come back later if it was something they were interested in joining.

Paysites will see a boom to their bottom line from surfers who are using this function, because they will end up seeing a lot of type-in or bookmark traffic that is joining without an affiliate cookie session. The paysites won't have to make the payouts because they wouldn't know who to give the credit to.

If enough surfers use this upcoming feature and affiliates are seeing a dramatic decrease in their commission checks, then affiliates will be in a really bad position as far as how to get compensated.

There is already a growing trend of affiliates turning into paysites. They have done their job in aggregating traffic to their sites and sending the traffic to various places.

With the notion of shaving and other fraudulent tactics, this cookie munging could be the last straw for larger affiliates to turn into their own paysites.

Fight the binge and purge!

A lot of people clear their cookies after surfing anyway. Hell, how many of us have sold "Eraser" software as affiliates over the years because people don't like to leave any trace of their surfing behind...

It has always been bad news for "pseudo-affiliates" who are seo'ing their way to fame and fortune. Not so much to guys like me that have free sites that have real surfers who come to our sites everyday and click our links.

i don't get how you think you are exempt from this cookie munging.

On your free sites, don't you have links to paysites?

Unless the surfer joins the program on the spot, your cookies would get destroyed using the "porn mode" of the FF or IE browser.

Whether a "real" surfer came to you via SE result, type-in, bookmark, etc.. they have to click on a link to go to a paysite.


Fight the clarifications!

only the shortsighted ones... oh wait, that's 90% of us...

You're not understanding what I'm saying. The cookies are deleted AFTER the browsing session is over.

After doing this for 10 years, I can tell you that my traffic trusts my site and come to it every day. It's like a portal to them. If they see something they like they usually come back to Grampland or ShavedGoat to see it again and click the link because they know I won't circle jerk them or blindlink them etc.

Nothing has changed. Firefox prompts you to clear everything already when you close the browser. And as I said earlier...we've all been selling history eraser software for years. So "no" it isn't gonna affect me one way or another. And it won't affect others with clean tgp's either. It won't make one bit of difference to me, Ampland, The Hun, WorldSex, etc.

Our business models don't operate the same way as the thousands of affiliates who send traffic through any means other than owning their own freesites. My surfers will still come to me for their porn needs and look at the galleries with my code just like they always have. The only bad part would be a CCBILL program. They rely completely on cookies. So IF a surfer clicked on a CC Bill only program and then bookmarked the site for future reference and then joined the next day...well, then I would be screwed.

But most programs these days use cascading software like NATS. The code is in the URL. It just isn't gonna affect many of us like you might think it would. No clarifications neccessary.

gotcha.. then you have built up your business well to have your site be the site to come back to (like thebestporn.com) and actually care about the surfers



so is the affiliate ID with other affiliate program systems.. NATS would set a cookie from the affiliate link.. so the issue still applies.

this means that if the "eraser" or "porn mode" is used by the surfer, the only way you are going to get credit for the join is if they joined during the web browsing session from your link. Given your model, you would be mostly exempt from this function, most others will have an issue.

I don't see programs like "the eraser" to be as widely prevalent, since you have to pay extra for it, and those that use it, probably have a different reason for covering their tracks.

With it being built into FF and IE, as soon as the surfer is aware of such feature, it makes perfect sense for them to enable it... its free, and no need to have cookies or history lingering around on their porn activity, even if they were single and were the only ones using the computer.

its funny how they are labeling as the "porn mode", where there are other classes of content out there that would want to make people paranoid about covering their tracks.


Fight the "pedo mode"!

I'm using the "InPrivate" mode from IE8 right now, I am assuming that there is some sort of cookie used for our log-ins here at GFY, but I was still able to just go to this site and not log in.

hmmmm.... maybe tomorrow may be different, but for now I didn't need to re-log in here.

DG

Yeah, the eraser software was pretty popular about 5 years ago when people weren't really computer savvy. These days at least half of the people know that they can go into internet options and delete their own history, files, and cookies with the click of a button.

And the NATS thing will save a lot of people's ass. Even the seo guys. Their link with code will be on the search engines and if a surfer bookmarks the paysite tour the url will contain the code as well.

The only time I can see this affecting anybody will be CC Bill only paysites (cookie tracking only), and IF a surfer checks out a NATS paysite from your link and then closes the browser and goes to someone elses link in the next session and clicks their link. Or a type in. But if you think about it...do we as affiliate really deserve a sale just because the surfer might have looked a month ago at the site with our link?

No. But it was pretty cool. lol But honestly, the percentage is going to be so small for lost sales on NATS type sites that it's not even worth breaking a sweat over.

ah, yes, the correct name of in IE.

wired article about InPrivate mode the feedback to the article is fun reading

a zdnet article talking little bit more about it.



Fight the cookie-less!

that's a great point.

so affiliate systems that don't embed the affiliate ID in the URL (such that a surfer could bookmark the tour. many use redirects and cookies) may get some chatter from affiliates about demanding this kind of linking once this new "feature" is added into IE and FF and affiliates start noticing (further) declining commissions.


Fight the re-engineering!

Wont change anything. Paraniod people who would use it already delete cookies and
block referring urls etc...

Might as well filter out no cookie traffic to your freesites - why burn bandwidth for nothing?

A lot of surfers will never use anything that clears their cookies.

I need my cookies for forums or i'd be fucked.

If it became such a big problem programs could put new ways to track into their end of the program..

from the screenshots of IE8, you can easily turn it on or off.


so if you were going to be switching from reading GFY or some other forum, to looking at content that you want to have erased, you push the button.. once you are done looking at "that" kind of content, you push the button to turn it off, and you are back to surfing with cookies.


Fight the cookie-on / cookie-off!

Cookie smookie. CCbill uses IP and cookie. The surfer can't turn the IP address off.

no, but ISP like cable, dsl, dialup (AOL), etc have dynamic IPs that can change after a few days or weeks

the IP of an AOL user can change during their session on a website, due to the way AOL proxies the internet access...

tracking by IP was the next idea after the realization that cookies could be deleted, but have long since known to be a bad idea as a method for tracking

Fight the webmastering like it was 1999!

like someone said fire fox already clears everything when you close it. That will become default for all browsers in the future.

does 'surfing session' refer to closing the browser after surfing? or per site?

I would love to see what percentage of sales come from return surfers with a cookie. I have always thought this was a impulse business. People see a site, are horny and join it. I wonder how many see a site and bookmark it and come back to join it a few days or even weeks later.

this doesn't bother me, i'm pretty sure the feature will not be on by default and unless you want it on you'll turn it on. who cares if a cookie is erased, if a user wants to find or go back to that site they'll find it again. simple as that.

Here Here! I totally agree... they either join then or the remember the URL and type it in manually. Plus as stated above, many porn surfers already delete cookies and temp files so their "other half" doesn't catch them... lol :1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Most programs have cookies that last less than 10 days, several only 2 days. On top of that the majority of programs use cookie tracking, hard link tracking, and ip tracking.

We already have a level of people with cookies off, being blocked, or erased after each browser session. This is why sponsors started to introduce more tracking methods 10 years ago.

I would say at least half of surfers don't buy the first time, but if they are intrigued they keep coming back to the tour (especially sites with tours that update in synch with the members area)

I always tell people to think like this: You are Joe Blow. You go to Wal Mart and you see a cool set of 6X9 speakers for your 1972 Plymouth Duster. You REALLY want those speakers.

BUT, you don't get paid until two weeks from now. So for the next two weeks, you put on your blue jeans and your wife beater, and put your mullet back in a ponytail and head down to Wal Mart to gaze lovingly at those 6X9's

You even use the interactive buttons with the car stereo display to listen to them a few times.

Then FINALLY you get your paycheck and after you buy beer and cigarettes and pay the rent...you have enough to buy those speakers! Hell yeah baby!

Now, I'm not a redneck shopping for speakers at Wal Mart. (though I have in the past lol ) But that's pretty much how I buy stuff myself. Whether it's a new guitar, a new camera, a new pair of jeans, or even a lap dance at the titty bar...I take my time and look at what I want several times until finally I just HAVE to have it. lol

I've watched this theory play itself out over the years over and over and over.

Now, you are right about impulse buying too. That's why I said about half do. I never underestimate what a drunk guy will buy latenight on the weekend. Especially if he's been at the strip club all night long and comes home alone. THEN you definitely get those impulse buys AND you seal the deal with guys who have been thinking about joining but hadn't pulled the trigger yet.

The new patriot act will replace IP addresses with social security numbers and that
will solve the problem. :1orglaugh

this is being blown up more than it should. think for a second, right now you can set your browser to not save cookies, turn cookies off, and clear all data when you close you browser. I don't see how this is a new feature to any browser its already there. How is IE or FF going to decide what is a porn cookie and what isnt...?

I bet the feature is an addon to the current clear data, but instead it would just wipe "cookies" only instead of clearing everything like it corrently does. which would be "OFF" by default

you can turn cookies and javascript off, but to use any website, you have to have them on.. sites will even tell you that you need to turn them on when they have detected that they are off..

so the percent that surf with cookies off is very, very low.


IE/FF doesn't need to know what is porn cookie or not.. they will have a simple button right within easy view of the browser, to flip the switch to do the "privacy mode".

once you are done with that, your disable it.

your previous cookies are still there.

so you can still auto-logon to any website that picks up your cookie.. its ONLY the cookies that are received during the "privacy mode" that would get deleted..


Fight the paranoid!

using your walmart analogy...

a surfer comes to your portal because he knows you have lots of different links, and he knows he visited your section about car speakers before.

when he clicks on the link, he goes to walmart.

like many sites, the affiliate ID is stored as a cookie, not in the URL.

the surfer is finally ready to buy, but instead of going back to your portal, he already remembered that it was at walmart.. either cuz he bookmarked it or he just typed in the domain name.

in either case, if he had "privacy mode" on, your affiliate ID cookie would not be there, and when he was ready to buy, you didn't get the credit.


while there are some programs that do 2 day or 0 day cookies, there are others that will do a year or lifetime.

there have been many threads about this subject of cookies and affiliates, and the overall response is that affiliates don't like a short cookie, so they will find some other equivalent site to promote who will give them credit for the traffic.

the easy ability to turn off cookies hurts not just adult, but the bigger pond of mainstream affiliates.

mainstream affiliates may not have as much of an impact since most times people who surf those sites are visiting sites that don't need the scrubbing.

It may be hard to measure the effect of this tool once it gets released, since affiliates are already seeing declines in commissions due to tube sites, economy, the zangos of the world, etc.


Fight the wally-world!

but the 3-2-4 number format of SSN will suffer the same shortage problem as IPv4 LOL

Fight the 3-2-4-11 !

I'm 100% sure that there are some people that do exactly that with a porn site, but I wonder if it really is 50%. That seems kind of high. I would have guess it around more like 10% but that is just guess and I have no research to back that up in any way.

I also wonder this. Say a surfer hits a TGP and sees my gallery and I'm promoting a paysite. They click my link and see the site then hit the back button, return to the tgp and hit a few more galleries. My cookie is now on them, but during their surfing they come across another gallery promoting the same site and they click that link, go to the site and this time sign-up. I wonder if the second galleries cookie overwrites mine or if mine stays and even though they finally joined through a gallery belongs to someone else I still get the sale.

Simple solution: set a surfer's cookie on the paysite's affiliate management software.

Safari has had that feature for awhile.

Difference is...I am walmart in the scenario. The paysite is the speakers.

this will suk

:helpme:1orglaugh:error

I have consoled myself by going out and finally buying that 1972 Duster I always dreamed about.
But I bought it at the lot across the street from the the lot that I was originally going to buy it from.
I got a great deal on it and the dealer threw in a free tank of gas and a box of cookies too!
http://www.musclecarclub.com/musclec...ster-1972c.jpg

Heh-heh...I love that car!

While this does suck for affiliates, it's not as big of a deal as alot of people will think it is.

The number of "bookmark" signups affiliates get is minimal. (Yes I know someone is going to come in here and posts stats to try and prove me wrong...but I'm talking about the vast majority of affiliates, not the few anomalies)

Porn is an impulse purchase. If they don't buy right away, they're probably not going to buy.

And my experience has been just the opposite. I'm with you on "this ain't gonna affect shit" but I disagree that "if they don't buy right away" etc.

As I said earlier, my personal experience with the type of tgps (real) and traffic (real) that I've always had has been just the opposite. But everybody's stuff is different. Just like the way that some people convert certain traffic better than others. For instance, I've never been able to convert "babe" traffic while others make a fortune off of it. Go figure.

Well you're misunderstanding what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is that the amount of signups you get from surfers being cookied and then opening their browser a week or a month later and typing in "sponsordomain.com" and signing up is next to nothing.

However, it is common for them to see an ad or a gallery on their favorite TGP (or other free site) for a certain site every day and eventually sign up to try it out.....but even then, it's an impulse.
Just because they didn't sign up the first time they saw it doesn't mean it's not an impulse purchase.

The same way that the pizza you order at halftime next Sunday won't be the first pizza you've ever ordered....but you still saw the commercial, it looked good, and you picked up the phone to order = impulse purchase.

Then we're describing the same thing. But to me it's not an "impulse" as much as a premeditated thing that kinda gnaws at the back of your mind for a while.

I think that most people on here would think an impulse buy is sort of a "I just saw this for the first time and I have to have it" kind of thing. Which definitely DOES happen. Especially around 3 a.m. on a Friday night. heh-heh

But I understand what you're saying now. :) Just a subtle difference in word definitions between us.

Im serious asking myself why you worry about this?

There will be new ways, anyway alot programs use a ID in their url so that solved the probllem already.

Not a huge issue if people start to change now to use the id in the urls.

How many people go to a paysite then close the IE session. Then the next day they go back to that website and join? What % of ppl do that? I would think it's pretty small. Porn is an instant gratification type of business.

Nice find...a proper script (like NATS) tracks the affilaite code first and cookie second, so this has no real effect.

IE8 beta 2 just came out yesterday. Download and see what "porn mode" actually does. I'm using it right now and yes I'm in "porn mode". Actually seems like when you have "porn mode" on the pages load MUCH faster. Could be me though.

...and all data that's passed (in V3 at least) is sent from page to page via POSTs, and you can't really selectively "break" that without making the browser entirely unusable.

Porn is an impulse buy. If this was a clothing store online, it's another story. Over 90% of the sales I send are made on the same day as the click was outbounded to the sponsor. It's probably higher but there are a percent of sales in which I can't accurately track their behaivior.

There are other ways to track sales but most programs don't want to implement them.

1: its pretty small, the number of people
2: this will never happen, porn or normal, microsoft can not know if its a porn site or not, think twice. this is simple a crap story what will never happen.

if this ever will happen it will be removed anyway in a next version, because microsoft will lose alot of lawsuits including firefox.

yeah, but apple users don't buy porn... they jerk off to a pic of steve jobs...

How many people who are paranoid about cookies and search history do you think are going to fucking BOOKMARK the pornsites they are so worried about people finding? :1orglaugh

Companies are just going to have to find a new way to track affiliate links. Server sside cookies, IP tracking, who knows. The odds of someone changing their IP have got to be about around the odds of someone clearing their cookies. Hell, it might even be BETTER in the favor of affiliates. If we went this route, isn't it feasible that we could fight the evil Zango in rewriting cookies and stealing sales too? I'm no expert on Zango, so I might be off on that. maybe someone more savvy in that department can shed some light. All I'm saying is people are jumping the gun a little quick on the doomsday prophecies with this one. There's plenty worse things to worry about.

At least this is a rectifiable problem. It's something the industry CAN do something about. it's not like rampant piracy and illegal tubes which are out of our control.