Apple may have just killed Affiliate Marketing
 

Big business changing news from Apple

On Monday Apple announced an upcoming feature (Intelligent Tracking Prevention) for Safari that uses machine learning to automatically block 3rd party tracking cookies.

The full implementation details are still a bit hazy, and I'm in the process of getting a beta version of Safari installed to fully determine what this means to affiliates and marketers.

At its worst, your affiliate cookies may no longer be set or only last 24hrs.

Obviously either option is going to be a huge hit to many of you. Especially for mobile where Safari has an over 50% market share.

I think CCBill has a setting for IP tracking too

"to automatically block 3rd party tracking cookies"

That will not affect legitimate CTR referrals from ad tools.

Cookies are set after the tool link request. That will fuck up ad tracking and cookie stuffing. It will not fuck up your ad image stats from remote domains.

Oh, well ...

Safari represents about 24% of our traffic, about 70% of that traffic is mobile, of that traffic it represents less than 8% of kink's sales, of that 8% only 2% are affiliate sales. It won't affect that much for us and hopefully we'll find ways to get around it by then if we do see it becoming a problem.

Ohh that's not so good.

So what ? Less thieves will be able to make money...Its a good thing.:2 cents:

Over 90 percent of the buys are impulse buys, made in the same session. So as long as the affiliate program uses sessions and IP tracking (most do) it won't have much of an impact.

Wanted to say the same. Only a small amount of sales would be lost.

discussion number 3,093,234,632,238,999 about the end of affiliate marketing because of [insert tracking blocking thing here] since 1998 or so.

The real percentage that will be affected is very very low.

Haha, agreed. There is no end. People need to get it through their heads. Affiliate marketing is only 1 piece of the pie though. If you think you can just do affiliate marketing alone, you don't understand marketing in the first place.

True, but discussion #3,093,234,632,238,923 is where the real good info is hidden. :D

I thought the good info was hidden in Clinton's e-mails... or was it Trump's secret communications with the Russians?

MPA3 has always (since 2001) used IP as backup for cookies to ensure tracking is always correct. :2 cents:

Must be nice for you to finally be so many years past your big version launch with a drug addled, incoherent Forest at the helm, helping you tout your super cool affiliate shaving tools built into your affiliate management software as being a really good thing.

I mean, ... you did that on forums that were 90% affiliates.

I've seen some stupid shit here for sure... that was right at the top of the list of the dumbest things i've ever seen on a webmaster forum.

No it was buried in Area 51, right after the Roswell crash that killed JFK on 9/11.

You know, the Illuminati and shit. :D

That would include a mountain of dumbass shit here on GFY alone. LOL

Trump anyone?

Like Kink said iOS mobile is TERRIBLE at converting anyway. You'd think people that can afford high end phones like that would sign up or buy more but they absolutely don't it's really weird. Who uses only cookies to track now anyway? Direct IP and php?

oh no, I'm going to have to go out and get a real job! FML :1orglaugh

end sarcasm..