Masking and Forwarding with CPAs - what Ive learned

Strider

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Hi there. I would like to share a small bit of information with all you that are thinking about, or are currently masking and forwarding a domain to a cpa offer. I have been doing this for a while and I have found that with the newer browsers such as Internet Explorer 8 and Safari, it is the standard for the browser to disable accepting 3 party cookies. Basically when you mask and forward, you are doing a iframe on the page which is loading cookies that does not match the current domain that you are one. The only way to make sure that all of your traffic gets counted when you make a lead or sale is if you disable the masking and just do forwarding with your domain.

Also, your affiliate network will show that a click was made but it might not track the lead or sale because it does not accept a 3rd party cookie within the settings of these new age browsers.

cheers
 
Haven't most browsers always had these options as user settings?

Typically, your average user will never even open the browser settings to change anything, and will be using it in the default mode, so it's just newer browser versions affected here, though we can probably expect this to become the norm in the future.

Won't non-acceptance of 3rd party cookies also affect cookie stuffing i.e. the cookie won't get set because it's from another domain.

Damn!
 
You are right, you have been able to do this for a long time now, but the latest versions of the popular browsers have this as a default and the majority of people (at least the people marketers target) do not change the settings to allow 3rd party cookies. Yes this totally affects Cookie Stuffing.

The only reason I brought this up is for people that see a lot of hits and smaller conversions when CS and doing forwarding/masking - this might be the reason why.

Haven't most browsers always had these options as user settings?

Typically, your average user will never even open the browser settings to change anything, and will be using it in the default mode, so it's just newer browser versions affected here, though we can probably expect this to become the norm in the future.

Won't non-acceptance of 3rd party cookies also affect cookie stuffing i.e. the cookie won't get set because it's from another domain.

Damn!
 
I only stuff my own WH sites from the same domain so luckily this doesn't affect me, sounds like things will get rough for some down the road though.

Thanks for the info :)
 
Does this method effect the method using WP blogs to fake the referrer?

The one from the contentgeneration website.
 
A domain forward is when you type in the domain name into the browser and it redirects you to another location.

Masking is the same thing, however, the forwarding is done within a frame on the page so it makes it appear that you have not been forwarded to another location and the url remains the same and attractive.

From my understanding,this affects anyone that does any type of frame loading to a affiliate offer that uses cookies to track. Even if you own the website and the domain name, if you are loading another website within your sites frame, it is considered to be 3rd party cookie and therefore many of the new browsers will prevent the cookie from being saved. In example, your website, mylegitsite.com has a frame that goes to myaffiliate.com, if the the user browser has block 3rd party cookies turned on, you will not receive the lead when action takes place. This is because you domain name, mylegitsite.com does not match, myaffiliate.com, for the cookies.

If anyone who has more experience wants to correct me if Im wrong, please let us know. But so far this is what I have found.
 
Yeah, so basically the wordpress CPA method from ContentGeneration is fine because it is forwarding without the masking, correct?
 
Here are the facts:

Internet Explorer and Apple Safari now come installed with: Block 3rd party cookies
FireFox and Chrome come installed with: Allow 3rd Party cookies.

In my opinion, 99 percent of surfers will never change these settings when they buy their computer or install the program. Also, alot of the new security program on computer tweak your computer's settings including browsers - this means possibly changing the standard of firefox and chrome to not allowing 3rd party cookies just like ie and safari.

Who knows if firefox or chrome will start setting this up as a standard in the feature releases. I guessing they will eventually.

Anyone who does affiliate marketing, this is good information to know.
 
There are some systems out there that don't just track with Cookie tracking. So even if users have cookies turned off you still get credit. It's done through something called a postback. Basically we pass a unique ID to the advertiser and then pass that unique ID back to us. This allows us to track even if the cookies don't track.

Success,
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Yeah, so basically the wordpress CPA method from ContentGeneration is fine because it is forwarding without the masking, correct?

I believe you are correct. This method does not mask it. Rather it forwards the user to your aff link as if they clicked it. That will then take them to the site and the cookie should be accepted.
 
Does this method effect the method using WP blogs to fake the referrer?
 
Does this method effect the method using WP blogs to fake the referrer?

If you are using it as a redirect using that mn number or even just a DMR then it should not effect you.

See my post right above yours.
 
I'm still trying to figure that out myself. I think it's some hoopla about these iframes (which I know little about).

If someone were to explain it, that would be great :) I'd like to understand it in the context of using adwords since you can't just use a standard redirector (like brad's) with adwords since the landing page url will not match your redirect url.

Masking is the same as using an iFrame.... So it's just yoursite.com and you want to frame cpaoffer.com (which means to show yoursite.com in the address bar but show cpaoffer.com in the the content of the browers). This way your traffic will think the site cpaoffer.com is yoursite.com .
 
Are you absolutely certain? Looking around about this, it seems it blocks cookies that track / exist on over 10 different sites. So if a user visits 10 affiliate sites with iframes of the same affiliate network, it will block.
 
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