What are the common causes and solutions for affiliate tracking discrepancies?

Affiliate tracking is just the tech or data transfer between a transaction that has happened. Tracking can be done with a tracking link, documented through an email, live person introduction and the person can even be sent to a landing page that contains the tracking link. It can be done with technology using server to server (S2S), cookies or literally with pen and paper.

Affiliate tracking the basis of your business - this is the main tool to show the performance by most important metrics, get paid on the agreed results and scale based on results analysis.

Affiliate Tracking is the view of when the user clicks up till when it lands on the operator portal. This is just 1/2 the circle though. Ideally the loop is closed by having an identifier on the click to know from which campaign the click is coming and that initial click can be marked as being a "converted" click, giving you more insights from where the converting traffic is coming from.

Right now first party data and server to server tracking is something all brands should be looking at. Quality tracking methods can make or break your partnerships, so be sure to ensure the foundation of your program and how it performs (your tracking solution) is always sound.

One often overlooked issue are the tracking systems that fail to account for browser cookie tracking differences and the many changes made by Safari, Chrome, and Firefox in recent years. Not only have they changed cookie tracking duration, but they've also chosen to block tracking software. The browser tracking wars have had a severe impact on affiliate revenue since 2018.

One thing most people won't ever talk about and is taboo is data manipulation. For high paying affiliate programs, the commissions get large and there is detagging of sales as well as having the tracking tech not work properly. It is hard for affiliates to detect this and requires blind trust. The best thing an affiliate can do to protect themselves when data isn't lining up is to focus on programs that deliver the best ROI, usually measuring by EPC or earnings per click.

Misuse of bonus codes and other offline tracking method can also impact accuracy of program data and conversion results. That’s why it’s important to set up campaigns and test them thoroughly before offering links and codes to your affiliates to use.

One of the most common causes - human error. If you are not skilled in the Affiliate tracking technical side, or you feel that the merchant is a bit lost on how to set tracking details correctly - always go to the Affiliate solution's / network's Support team. Better to set things straight form the start - than try to fix issues when the traffic is already active on the campaign.

There can be several reasons why numbers do not match 1) Traffic capping - It can be that the source is sending 10k clicks and the affiliate system is not picking all the clicks or it is "grouping" them together. 2) Wrong trackers - it might be that a tracking that worked last month do not work today as there might have been an update / new campaigns etc. It is important that your sales team stay abreast with the key affiliate managers emails so if there is something to change this is done asap 3) Approvals of conversions - some operators auto approve the FTD (any value of deposit), others need a "minimum deposit" for a conversion to qualify, others might need account manager to review, others might not qualify for "some" reason

It is also important to understand whether all the appropriate tracking is in place during the affiliate handover process from publisher to the advertiser's landing page. You can see single events in Chrome developer tools; Moonpull's tools enable this at scale though, for a more in-depth analysis of whether the tracking has been set up correctly by the advertiser. Moonpull's audits provide visibility on how the first-party tracking is configured and the effects of any cookie consent mechanism. In our experience, a good %age of issues are a result of changes in the advertisers' websites and tracking set-ups - https://moonpullpartners.com/9-tips-to-fix-affiliate-tracking-issues/

You can use tools like StatsDrone and Nifty Stats to track your commissions and clicks, this is the easier way to see the data across 10s to 100s of affiliate accounts. Next is having control over your links and knowing how many clicks you are sending out and having tools like Google Analytics to also know how much traffic is flowing through your pages.

Tracking of Clicks. If you have systems in-house or off the shelf tracking solutions, numbers should be close (although clicks might still drop due to large amount of redirects along the path). Each click has an identifier that can be mapped. Not all affiliate systems show the same data (unique clicks, unique visitor etc) Tracking of Events : This data is picked from the operator portal, mobile tracking tools like Appsflyer. The qualified event needs to be confirmed with the advertiser. Appsflyer will show the immediate FTD event but the advertiser might need a minimum deposit to be reached to numbers might not fully tally.

Since Apple launched ITP, there is lot of thing to take in consideration. If an affiliate program doesn't deploy a specific tracking technology such as Server to server, the cookie will be stored 7 days as a maximum by Safari (if first party cookie, third party are blocked by default). Most advertisers offers comissions for sales up to 30 days after last clic, but most also doesn't use Server to server, so iOS tracking is pretty much broken and unfair for publishers. Also GA4 is an issue as it tends to favor its own channel like google ad so advertisers keeps spending on it. If an advertiser uses GA4 to attribute sales, you can be sure there will be a big difference with the data from the affiliate platform.

- Identify where the tracking issues are coming from - your side or from the merchant. - Flag the issue right away, sharing. the evidence of discrepancies. - If it's your issue - be open and fair how and when it will be fixed. - If it's merchant's issue - get the timeline for the issue to be fixed, and also if it's a significant loss - look for compensation. - Contact and work together with merchant and support to get things sorted. - Test the tracking once it's fixed to make sure this time it's good!!

The ideal situation for the "affiliate marketer" is to have all in dashboard : The initial click being tracked >> Goes to affiliate system / Mobile tracking >> conversions collected / postbacked >> the click marked as converted. If some numbers do not match it is important that the teams do a manual investigation for a particular product and follow the funnel from A to Z, documenting every step and then if no issue is found internally (eg wrong tracker, wrong url, capped offer, mistargeting [geo / device ]) then one can drop an email to the affiliate manager asking for a call, with the discussed details followed by an email.

- Always double-check all the details and ask Support to check if everything is set correctly. - Test the tracking before going live with the campaign. - Monitor results daily (or even more often, depending on scale) and flag any anomalies.

Having an open communications between the affiliate and the operator is always key. The next step is to involve competent tech ppl from both parties keeping them both in the communication loop (the "telephone" methods tend to take longer and things are dropped / misunderstood along the way). During this step usually things get magically sorted in couple of minutes as both start speaking the same language :). If there is some fix to be done on some system this is placed into the dev cycle and a follow up email is sent when the fix is ready to retest.

Consider that not all affiliate marketing platforms display the clicks in the same manner - some display the raw number of clicks, some display the unique clicks, other use more complex variations like unique visitors. So when comparing, or trying to understand click discrepancies, make sure you are comparing apples with apples, and not apples with bananas!