Those in
the email world largely missed a small but temporary surge
in internet advertising. I bring it up certainly not because
of its time relevancy – this particular incident ended in
July – but due to its contextual relevancy with this issues’
Trends Report. In it, I spent time discussing the
interaction between a pixel and a cookie, the how of the CPA
pixel / cookie equation. We touched on when a pixel could
show but could not make any hard and fast rules on when. One
thing we didn’t address was the “when” of the cookie.
https://www.lynxtrack.com/signup.php
Those of us that run CPA ads
have become, in most cases, accustom to an action occurring
within a short time span from when the user first interacted
with that particular site. In some cases, users do not act
until days even weeks after visiting the site. In cases such
as these the cookie plays a vital role in tracking the user
and sending back what the advertiser, network, and publisher
hope is accurate information regarding who should get
credit. The integrity of the program and reputation of the
advertiser depend on accurate information.
This brings us back to the
overall indiscriminant nature of the cookie and pixel. They
don’t think; they record and report. They don’t assess,
interpret, extrapolate, empathize, or understand. They are
perfect… perfectly ripe for errors to occur. So long as we
can keep the margin for error low, the integrity of the
program remains high. Add time into the equation,
specifically the time between cookie being placed and action
occurring, along with high visibility for an ad, and the
margin for error increases.
EBay’s campaign, run through
Commission Junction, is the perfect example. Publishers got
paid primarily when a user not only set up a new account but
also became an active user by either placing a bid or
purchasing with 30 days of account creation. This isn’t the
same as filling out an online education lead. The complexity
of the action almost dictates that the time it takes for a
user visiting the site to the action occurring will exceed
one browser session or even one day. For that reason, eBay
kindly and wisely set their cookie to last for 30 days upon
the visit to the page.
A unique thing about eBay
though is its reach and activity. The probability that
someone would interact with eBay within 30 days of the
cookie being set was pretty close to the chances of someone
doing a Google search. What enterprising internet marketers
discovered was that the more cookies they set, the greater
their earnings were. And, given that they could choose the
creative to run, it meant they could in essence launch the
landing page and not worry whether users did anything right
then. Chances were good that they would do something within
the next 30 days. All that mattered was whether you had the
most recent cookie.
As an ad network, you had the
possibility of showing millions of impressions, setting
millions of cookies and almost guaranteeing that you’d see
large returns because of eBay’s popularity. The problem here
being that you may or may not have played a role in that
user’s activity. That user may have searched for concert
tickets for a particular show, saw an eBay affiliate’s ad on
Google, clicked on it and reviewed the bids. They may have
decided to keep surfing around, aware though of that
auction. In their surfing though, they are served a pop of
the eBay homepage from an ad network (or affiliate
advertising on an ad network), the user’s cookie information
gets modified, and when they return, to join, in order to
purchase the tickets, the “wrong” affiliate gets credit. The
integrity of the system dictates that the one who earned the
action should get paid for it. The pop affiliate did not
truly earn it. They weren’t in any violation though, so eBay
made the wise and simple solution. It said that all
affiliates could only show pops that eBay made and could not
launch a non-pop ad as a pop – they can’t force the cookie
onto users’ machines.
EBay was a unique scenario,
fueled by its popularity as a whole and the time it takes
for an action to occur. In the end, it’s up to the
advertiser or ad network to determine how the cookie gets
placed and for how long it lasts. Say you click on an ad but
don’t convert right away. It could be a big purchase and you
aren’t ready to do it just that second, so you bookmark the
page and after clearing it with the better half you go back
the following day and make the purchase. Upon purchase, the
pixel shows. If the cookie still exists, i.e. it has a time
interval associated with it longer than one day, the
affiliate whose link you click on will get credit for your
action.
What happens in cases where
the user might not click on the ad but goes to the site
later and makes that purchase? The pixel might show, but the
publisher in most cases, given the current technology
constraints of the majority of advertisers and ad networks,
doesn’t get credit. There was no ad click, no cookie set,
and thus no way for the pixel, were it to load, to have
anything to announce. These are difficult problems to solve.
You as the ad network want to get credit for the action, but
you also want to make sure that if you record it you have
the information necessary to give it to the right affiliate.
The pixel may have the power,
but the glue that holds it together comes in the form of the
cookie. If the pixel is the “P” in CPA, it’s fair to say
that the cookie is the “C.”
