Tracking going down over the years

[Malikbhai]

Have the old players in this industry noticed that overall rate of successful cookies is going down over the years? The biggest perpetrators are probably the adblockers (the ones that target large affiliate networks), privacy centered browsers, even the dodgy affiliate software combined with the antics of the operators themselves.

Wouldn't be surprised if affiliates are losing half of their potential signups to failed tracking.

[Cash Bonus]

I have noticed that my traffic isn't as strong as it used to be. This month is no exception either. You're right, there are way too many obstacles in the way for both affiliates and customers alike. I'll give you some examples. One example is that supposing there is a potential customer wanting to play at one of your casinos and they are from Australia. They go to open the casino through your site and they're greeted with a message telling them that people from the country Australia are prohibited from playing at this casino and the screen is inaccessible. This along with ad blockers and what not is interfering with our industry and our business and these are some of the reasons behind not doing as well as before. I have also spoken to a couple of other affiliates and they have the same issues. Plus you have antivirus and malware programs that can and will get in the way. The competition in the world is much stronger than it was even just 5 years ago.

[sweetbet]

Have the old players in this industry noticed that overall rate of successful cookies is going down over the years? The biggest perpetrators are probably the adblockers (the ones that target large affiliate networks), privacy centered browsers, even the dodgy affiliate software combined with the antics of the operators themselves.

Wouldn't be surprised if affiliates are losing half of their potential signups to failed tracking.

I'm sure that some of the dodgy sponsors have an office party every time a new ad blocker or privacy centered browser is released.

[Renee]

One example is that supposing there is a potential customer wanting to play at one of your casinos and they are from Australia. They go to open the casino through your site and they're greeted with a message telling them that people from the country Australia are prohibited from playing at this casino and the screen is inaccessible.

When it comes to banned traffic, I'm not sure you can really put that in the same boat as tracking because that's probably something you should be handling from your website.

Although in our program we have a bounce back link so any banned traffic gets redirected to a link of your choice. I believe we are the only program doing that though.

[allaboutthebets]

I have definitely seen a decline in sign ups and deposits to clicks over last few years.

[PROFRBcom]

When it comes to banned traffic, I'm not sure you can really put that in the same boat as tracking because that's probably something you should be handling from your website.

Although in our program we have a bounce back link so any banned traffic gets redirected to a link of your choice. I believe we are the only program doing that though.

Renee,

Can you explain this banned traffic+bounce back link in a little more detail please? I'm not quite sure I follow and I really want to understand how this works and which issues this solves (i.e. does it solve adblocking software? or privacy browsers? or what exactly?)


Thanks!

[Sherlock]

The decline has also other reasons which is market penetration. But yes, the loss caused by bad tracking is huge.

The main reason is IMO the dodgy affiliate software that is not combined with the antics of the operators themselves. The oldschool systems like 5dimes still track well. The old proprietary simple tipico had perfect tracking; the Neterefer tipico is **** etc.

Most of people do not use the privacy centered browsers and even the amount of people using adblocks is not on the scale that explains the big drop.

The last nail to the coffin will be once Chrome will implement their own adblock, which is something they already started (they block ads or even wesbites they find "misleading") and something they will work on unless they are stopped (my friend, owner of ad agency, is suing Google atm). But affiliate industry might kill itself before Google does it. It is a thrilling race.

[Renee]

Renee,

Can you explain this banned traffic+bounce back link in a little more detail please? I'm not quite sure I follow and I really want to understand how this works and which issues this solves (i.e. does it solve adblocking software? or privacy browsers? or what exactly?)


Thanks!

Of course
The issue it solves is any traffic you're sending our brand from a country we don't accept players from.

We have a section in our marketing tools where you can redirect traffic from banned countries to a link of your choice. The main banned countries are listed so you can send them to a different link per country. Then there is a default link where any other banned countries will go to.

So for example, if a player in the USA clicks on one of your links to our brands, it will redirect that player to a URL that you've chosen. You can choose to send the player back to a page on your website that tells them the brand they clicked on doesn't take players from their location (recommended) or you can redirect them straight to another casino (using your affiliate link) that does take players from there.

If you'd like any more info hit me up

[Maxfalcon]

The decline has also other reasons which is market penetration. But yes, the loss caused by bad tracking is huge.

The main reason is IMO the dodgy affiliate software that is not combined with the antics of the operators themselves. The oldschool systems like 5dimes still track well. The old proprietary simple tipico had perfect tracking; the Neterefer tipico is **** etc.

Most of people do not use the privacy centered browsers and even the amount of people using adblocks is not on the scale that explains the big drop.

The last nail to the coffin will be once Chrome will implement their own adblock, which is something they already started (they block ads or even wesbites they find "misleading") and something they will work on unless they are stopped (my friend, owner of ad agency, is suing Google atm). But affiliate industry might kill itself before Google does it. It is a thrilling race.

Tracking can evolve with cookie less tracking as a fallback. It works well. Also in addition, adding tags in URI can also be beneficial for users who are converting on first visit.

Tracking in affiliate programs must be improved.

Concerning Google, I am not sure they want to kill cookies or will be able to kill the affiliate market. Even if they have so much information about everyone (fingerprints, cookies, + everyone that is logged on their apps through desktop and most important smartphones, or on external websites / services using Google auth), the competition is fierce and users can fly fast if they choose to. We already have seen Apple blocking cross site cookies if I remember well (particularly the doubleclick ones etc). And if they mess up, that may end bad for them also. Google knows it IMO, they are not dumb. But for sure they would love that every advertiser in the world only use Google Ads.

[Sherlock]

Tracking in theory might be much better, but it absolutely does not mean that it MUST improve.

Even Google now has the power to kill the business completely as you say, they just are not just killing it at full force. It might change though.

Most of biggest affiliates programs want to get rid of us or they want as much traffic with as little players assigned to leeches, so there is no incentive for tracking improvements.

I think it is good to take things simply: the tracking goes down, so it has a reason(s). Maybe we do not see the whole picture, but the reasons are here. Tracking and affiliate marketing might improve, if the reasons and environment change. But is the change coming? I see no one sign of it.

The obvious correlation that the more illegal the merchant is the better is the tracking is not showing us a bright future.

[Maxfalcon]

Tracking in theory might be much better, but it absolutely does not mean that it MUST improve.

Even Google now has the power to kill the business completely as you say, they just are not just killing it at full force. It might change though.

Most of biggest affiliates programs want to get rid of us or they want as much traffic with as little players assigned to leeches, so there is no incentive for tracking improvements.

I think it is good to take things simply: the tracking goes down, so it has a reason(s). Maybe we do not see the whole picture, but the reasons are here. Tracking and affiliate marketing might improve, if the reasons and environment change. But is the change coming? I see no one sign of it.

The obvious correlation that the more illegal the merchant is the better is the tracking is not showing us a bright future.

I understand what you are saying, but if affiliates are not paid for their work, who will do the work for them? Unless all ad agencies / brands hire hundreds of specialized marketers and engineer all the content in house, affiliate marketing will still be here... Affiliate marketing is a good way to outsource complex marketing / specialized work without any risk which requires highly engaged individuals and I am not sure workers in marketing companies are willing to put down the work required for a modest salary.

But as you say, lots of programs want to have the work AND not pay - it won't work, as affiliates will step down. Nobody will work for nothing. And Internet cannot be made up only of big websites from big brands with IA marketing in between. This will be obvious to everyone, and it's not the way it is structured. Nothing will replace a human contact, not even now the specialized IA markerting (the new graal). While it's a technological advance and it helps to efficiently process lots of data at a rate a human (or a team) cannot, it loses its human touch. People love to be in contact with people. We are social animals, not computers.

Tracking is going down for the reasons you explained. Competition, and technology, and maybe increase in shaving. Most people now browse from several devices. Devices are clearing cookies or blocking them. Also inter application browsing kills off cookie tracking - not everyone is browsing only from the same mobile browser, people do navigate from an app to another and inside a web app opened, you can lose the tracking from a previous browser session.

Another solution, is to make the signing up process as an API and authorizing affiliates to process the sign up for the customer / player. Then, using an API with the affiliate program, you send the information, along with your affiliate tag. This could be very easy to create. But you must find the incentive to make the player signing up to a particular casino / product. White labels are also a solution, as they are domain based tracking (whatever is happening before is of no concern, there's no need of tracking).

So there are solutions!

[Sherlock]

who will do the work for them?

That is one of the mysteries I am very much curious about. Maybe nobody? Things that make no sense happen all the time.
You can also ask what will people in Venezuela eat if there is no food produced?
Affiliate marketing worked and was being killed by greed, regulations, idiocy of internal processes of corporations. Maybe it will be killed completely even when it "makes no sense".

IA is mostly a bullshit. Most of things that happen online are bullshit. There is really no point to talk about anything else in affiliate marketing until the tracking is resolved (which I think will be just worse). If tracking does not work, then IA or any other layer on the top of that is just a buzzword with ZERO connection to real world, real economy and money. What is alarming here is that the affiliate managers are now similar to some God prophets. They talk about AI, pixel tracking, or at least html5, but they do not even consider possibility that their tracking is fundamentally and absolutely broken.

I worked with one affiliate manager intensively. We were resolving the tracking issue for 10 days at least. I admire that affiliate manager very much, even when in the end she had to get drunk, because finally she saw at least a piece of the horrible reality and how the rest of the things that she is doing is a complete nonsense.

The broken tracking is the elephant in the room and it is so huge that it will cause the explosion of the room. Affiliate managers do not want to see the problem. We also do not want to see the problem. I was shocked that the biggest affiliates do not even know how to check cookies. Affiliate managers also do not know usually how to check the cookies. If nobody knows how to check the tracking then there is not a way how to check it and fix it. We all want to believe the problem will resolve, but it will not.

There are technically solutions, but even a current solution and when I speak just about cookies (and not the new approaches that you propose) is not technically working. The biggest affiliate platform Income access is broken and each update breaks it more and more. If we make problem more complex, even less people will be able and willing to check the technical side.

[Maxfalcon]

That is one of the mysteries I am very much curious about. Maybe nobody? Things that make no sense happen all the time.
You can also ask what will people in Venezuela eat if there is no food produced?
Affiliate marketing worked and was being killed by greed, regulations, idiocy of internal processes of corporations. Maybe it will be killed completely even when it "makes no sense".

IA is mostly a bullshit. Most of things that happen online are bullshit. There is really no point to talk about anything else in affiliate marketing until the tracking is resolved (which I think will be just worse). If tracking does not work, then IA or any other layer on the top of that is just a buzzword with ZERO connection to real world, real economy and money. What is alarming here is that the affiliate managers are now similar to some God prophets. They talk about AI, pixel tracking, or at least html5, but they do not even consider possibility that their tracking is fundamentally and absolutely broken.

I worked with one affiliate manager intensively. We were resolving the tracking issue for 10 days at least. I admire that affiliate manager very much, even when in the end she had to get drunk, because finally she saw at least a piece of the horrible reality and how the rest of the things that she is doing is a complete nonsense.

The broken tracking is the elephant in the room and it is so huge that it will cause the explosion of the room. Affiliate managers do not want to see the problem. We also do not want to see the problem. I was shocked that the biggest affiliates do not even know how to check cookies. Affiliate managers also do not know usually how to check the cookies. If nobody knows how to check the tracking then there is not a way how to check it and fix it. We all want to believe the problem will resolve, but it will not.

There are technically solutions, but even a current solution and when I speak just about cookies (and not the new approaches that you propose) is not technically working. The biggest affiliate platform Income access is broken and each update breaks it more and more. If we make problem more complex, even less people will be able and willing to check the technical side.

Indeed. Your point of view makes sense. Yes, the technical side is not fully understand nor is really well managed. I've encountered that lots of times in my affilliate "career". And also you're right, sometimes things with complete nonsense are happening. But it usually does not last.

Affiliates may revert back to pre-paid deals, mixed in their affiliate marketing. If I have traffic, I can lend my space with pre-paid plans. I can at least produce the real click / view stats with information of the traffic I have sent. Then, it's the advertiser problem to matches it in their stats, to see if it's a good deal. It's not my problem.

Anyone has other thoughts about that?

[Sherlock]

I do not believe prepaid can save this as even CPA is a bullshit. I would not make even 10% of what I made on CPA and that said, my players are averages, not some selection of whales.

Yes even on CPA are guys who made decent living somehow, but in the end of the day it is about investments. Because there are sites where the value of traffic is not only zero, but straight negative because of bonus hunters. How can you estimate the value of the prepaid traffic across traffic sources? The best way was revenue share.

And there are so many frauds with traffic. Once someone starts to give prepaid deals, you will immediately have thousands of identities jumping in from Asia and former USSR who will abuse the system. As they will abuse the system, the value of prepaid deals will go down. Still the cheater will make money and the decent guys like you will be forced to sell for way too low. Exactly this happened with ad-market outside of Google. The non-adsense banner market is long dead because of cheaters. The popunder market appeared as reaction to this but is also killed.

You see this from your perspective, but there are always a lot of bad guys, who will play anything else than revenue share.

[Malikbhai]

..Because there are sites where the value of traffic is not only zero, but straight negative because of bonus hunters...

This needs an entire thread. A lot of misconception exists around the efficacy of what converts, and what just brings in worthless traffic; albeit in tens of thousands.

[Sherlock]

The thread does not exist, so I will continue with the analogy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons <- this is where the affiliate marketing or generally online marketing without revenue share is heading