Who doesn’t? Well, we love them and we hate them at the same time. They are sweet, but if we have too much of them will be unhealthy. Well, it’s the same with the cookies we use for tracking.
The HTTP cookies (or the tracking cookies), are parcels of text sent by a server to a web client (usually a browser) and then sent back unchanged by the client each time it accesses that server. HTTP cookies are used for authenticating, session tracking (state maintenance), and maintaining specific information about users, such as site preferences or the contents of their electronic shopping carts. (Wikipedia:cookies)
The reason we hate them is because we can’t count on them. In the affiliate marketing, a cookie is storing the affiliate ID and the offer we use on our site, so if something happens with the cookie, we (the affiliates/publishers) are not going to get paid for the transaction. A cookie can be blocked by the browser settings, it can be deleted or it just expires. Every time something like this would occur, we are loosing the tracking, so we are loosing money.
For this reason, and not only, we have developed the MicroClick Form (previously known as the I-SaveNow Form), which was released to small groups of webmasters in 2001. The main advantage of using the Form, instead of a regular banner or text ad, was the embedded “producer ID” (affiliate ID) in the form, which would be consistent, no matter what the browser settings were, or if the visitor would delete (destroy) later on the cookies. Also, instead of having 30 days expiration time (as the cookies have), the producer ID would be available for tracking for as long as you are keeping the form online.
The response from the affiliates (publishers) or Lead Sellers (in Leadpile’s Marketplace) has been fantastic. Over the years we have grown our Marketplace to thousands of publishers that are using our forms for their websites, generating millions of impressions daily.
Unfortunately, the ones that don’t have a website in place or they have something that isn’t specific to a certain industry, they will still have to redirect the consumer to a website with specific content related to the advertised product/service. To fill in this need, Leadpile has developed the offers and the new MicroClick Ads, which are more like Microsites, used to host the Form and capture the visitor data. In order to keep the traffic focused on the publisher website and increase their monetization capabilities, we have developed the Microsites to open in new small windows. Same as we did with the Form, the MicroClick Ads and sites are hosted by secured servers, so the transactions can be processed through a secure socket layer (SSL) connection. Unfortunately, we will have to use the cookies for this process. I guess we will have to love the cookies, with their good and bad consequences. The good news is that, if you choose to go on a “diet”, you have that option with Leadpile.
Good things!
