Cracking the code of Fair Attribution: Affiliate Marketing’s Biggest Opportunities

In affiliate marketing, there is always potential for growth and refinement, as is the case in any dynamic field. The last-click attribution model, while widely used, sometimes missed out on recognizing the significant efforts and contributions made by partners in guiding consumers down the funnel. At Skimlinks, we believe attribution should reflect the true value of every publisher in the conversion journey in the affiliate ecosystem. 

In this conversation, our Global Partnership Director Gaurav Arora and Senior Marketing Manager Naomi Kono discuss the complexities of attribution and share their views on how the affiliate landscape can evolve towards a fairer, more transparent system that rewards high-quality commerce content creators based on their actual influence. 

Naomi: Fair compensation for publishers is crucial, but there are so many challenges – sales tracking leakage, and post-transaction deduping. Where do we even start?

Gaurav: Let’s start with the impact of sales tracking leakage. In one example, a merchant testing with the APMA and Moonpull found a 38% increase in sales after closing gaps in their affiliate marketing tracking. As this data points shows, there are tremendous business opportunities for both merchants as well as publishers if we can resolve this industry wide challenges. 

Naomi: What are the common reasons sales tracking may not work effectively?

Gaurav: Typically, sales tracking leakage is influenced by factors such as consent banners, adblockers, and browser settings, often exacerbated by flawed or compromised technical implementations. Another common reason for sales tracking leakage is the lack of in-app tracking. Sales redirected from browsers into merchant apps are sometimes not tracked properly. Our Merchant Development Team works closely with merchant partners to optimize their in-app tracking and once enabled in-app tracking offers multiple benefits. There is however still a lot of work to do here to ensure merchants attribute sales correctly and have full visibility on their shopper journeys. 

To address these challenges, Skimlinks works with industry partners like Moonpull to audit tracking accuracy. This collaboration was highlighted during our recent mini-conference in London, where we brought together leading affiliate networks and publishers to discuss this issue.

Naomi: As a business we’re really passionate about fair reward for the work from our publisher partners on quality commerce content. Let’s talk about a hot industry topic: the activities of browser extensions. 

Gaurav:  It’s definitely a topical point and for Skimlinks we really care about compliance and transparency. Working with our publishers means two things: minimizing leakage as much as possible and giving networks and advertisers clear visibility into publisher referrals. The level of transparency we offer allows merchants to make informed decisions and maintain a fair ecosystem. With a strict approval process and only a 3% publisher acceptance rate, we partner exclusively with high-quality publishers who truly add value to advertisers (Learn more about our approval process here). 

Naomi: Server-to-server (S2S) tracking is also a great alternative to cookie-based tracking, but it’s not widely used. What do you see as the main blockers here? 

Gaurav: Yes, S2S tracking is more reliable, but adoption is slow. Cost is a major factor for merchants, as is a lack of urgency among merchants. However, smart merchants are realizing that without accurate tracking, they can’t properly optimize their affiliate programs and can also see the advantage of optimizing tracking in building relationships with top publisher partners.

Naomi: Attribution in affiliate marketing comes with its challenges and Skimlinks sees the solutions. Working with our key partners, we are at the forefront of these discussions, advocating for a fairer and more sustainable future for affiliate marketing. We’d love to hear from people interested in working on the challenge too and make a more transparent and fair ecosystem.