Google Ads, formerly known as Google AdWords, is an essential platform for online advertising and marketing. With its massive reach, sophisticated targeting options, and flexible budgeting, it’s important that TUNE makes it easy to work seamlessly with Google Ads. That’s why we’re thrilled to announce our enhanced integration with Google, designed to streamline your experience in the TUNE platform and unlock the full potential of Google Ads.

Google Ads Certification

At TUNE, we make sure to stay on top of important changes in the industry. Following new requirements for transparent redirection, TUNE has earned certification as an official Google click tracking partner.

The Google Certification Program helps protect users from click tracker abuse by enabling click tracker transparency.

To make it easier for TUNE customers to take advantage of this certification, we developed additional user interface features that streamline the link creation process.

Ensuring Compliance and Transparency

We’ve worked diligently to ensure that our integration with Google Ads meets and exceeds industry standards.

Our new feature set, developed specifically for Google, simplifies the link creation process by automating the necessary configurations. With just a single checkbox, TUNE takes care of all the technical details, appending the required transparency parameter (redirect_url) with correctly formatted values to any link you choose.

This new setting can be found on the individual Offer page, located in the Generate Tracking panel.

No more manual configuration or guesswork required. Simply copy and paste the generated tracking link into Google’s Tracking Template field, and you’re good to go.

Get Started with TUNE’s Google Ads Integration

This feature set is now available to all TUNE customers.

If you would like to take advantage of this integration, navigate to Company –> Customize Application –> Domain and select “Enabled” in the Google Ads dropdown menu. You have the flexibility to turn this feature on and off as needed.

You can find more information in our Integrating with Google Ads help article.

Questions? Feedback? Reach out to your dedicated Customer Success Manager or email TUNE Support at support@tune.com.

This isn’t your parents’ influencer marketing.

Say goodbye to flat fees and sponsored posts. Today’s top influencers are low-risk, results-driven partners who work closely with brands to promote the products and services that resonate with their highly engaged audiences.

Adding influencers to your affiliate marketing program can increase revenue and prove affiliate ROI — if you know what you’re doing. The Influencer-Affiliate Blueprint is your guide to making it happen.

Download the Influencer-Affiliate Blueprint

Knowing influencers and creators are a partner group unlike any other, TUNE teamed up with powerhouse growth agency Zeroto1 to develop an instructional e-book that doesn’t pull any punches. In it, you’ll read up on how influencer marketing really works, why and how it’s different from traditional affiliate marketing, and the steps you can follow to recruit and empower influencers in your program.

You’ll also learn from real-life use cases, including Zeroto1’s insanely successful launch and subsequent growth of the Instacart Tastemakers affiliate program. (Yes, they’re behind that Tastemakers, with TUNE technology driving the program.)

We don’t sugarcoat the tough stuff — like the fact that you’ll need to give up some control to get quality creative content. Or that no matter how hot your product is or how high your commissions are, some influencers just won’t want to work with your brand. What we do is provide you with insightful, actionable information to put you on the path to successful influencer-affiliate partnerships.

What Is Influencer-Affiliate Marketing?

There was a time when the term “influencer marketing” meant shelling out big bucks for celebrity sponsored posts; focusing on brand awareness and virality versus measurable conversions and KPIs; buying followers instead of engaging with them.

Not anymore.

Instead, today’s creators and influencers run the gamut from social media stars to niche role models. They have built up highly-engaged communities and loyal followings, with a deep understanding of what resonates and what feels inauthentic. They count on their audience for a living, so when they promote a product or a service, they’re confident it’s a fit.

This is why creators and influencers are embracing the performance-based model that is the foundation of affiliate marketing, resulting in a hybrid model: influencer-affiliate.

Why Are Brands Embracing Influencer-Affiliate?

As more influencers are making the change to a performance basis, more brands are embracing influencers.

Here’s why.

Most traditional publishers — in other words, your favorite websites and platforms — thrive on advertisers and networks. Their bottom line is tied to impressions, engagement, and clicks. This has led to many of them prioritizing these metrics over user experience.

As a result, across the digital ecosystem, the perception of engagement has become more important than actual engagement and quality user experiences. You can see it for yourself by searching on your laptop or smartphone for a topic you’re interested in. Increasingly, all that gets you is a confusing jumble of results, ads, and AI-generated answers to questions you haven’t asked, or links that lead to broken interfaces and frustrating interactions.

Brands, consequently, are moving away from platforms with shallow engagement and vanity metrics, following their target audience. People want authenticity and trustworthiness, communities where they feel engaged and accepted.

Influencer-affiliates are a bridge to these communities. They help brands build connections to them without the corporate side — the advertising ick — of marketing getting in the way.

Get Started with the Influencer-Affiliate Blueprint

Over the next few months, we’ll be exploring key chapters from the Influencer-Affiliate Blueprint here on the TUNE Blog. Check back often so you don’t miss out.

While we’ve barely scratched the surface of influencer-affiliate programs, you don’t have to wait for the rest of the blog series to come out. Download the full e-book now to discover:

• the four steps to success in influencer-affiliate marketing
• what makes influencers and creators different from traditional affiliates
• how to find and engage the right influencers for your brand
• the technology and teams you’ll need to get started
• real examples and use cases from everyday brands

The most successful influencers connect with their audiences through authenticity, honesty, and winning personalities. We hope to do the same.

Enjoy!

Download the Influencer-Affiliate Blueprint

Earnings per click is the be-all end-all performance metric to affiliates.

This key performance metric is your average revenue for each individual click you are driving to an advertiser. And if you don’t think this is the one affiliate marketing metric to keep your eyes on, allow me to explain.

But first, ask yourself a few key questions. Are you studying the metric? Do you know how it is calculated? Are you using it to strategically influence business decisions?

If you answered no to any of the above questions, you are leaving money on the table. And if that isn’t enough to persuade you, let’s cover a few other reasons why this metric matters.

Earnings Per Click Is Your Most Valuable Metric

Earnings per click is an agnostic statistic.

[bctt tweet=”At the end of the day, affiliates want to maximize their profit.” username=”tune”]

The metric doesn’t care how high your conversion rate is. It doesn’t care that exclusive partner payout you may have or the sheer number of clicks you generated. Earnings per click cuts through the clutter and gives you the exact amount of money you can expect to receive for every click you purchase based on historic performance. With that knowledge, it is just up to the affiliate to get their cost per click under their earnings per click to be profitable.

The true potential of the earnings per click metric is fully unlocked when utilized in a paid supply side cost per click or cost per thousand impressions environment. If you can extrapolate a cost per click for every click you drive to your paid advertisements, then you can directly compare this against the earnings per click that is calculated in your tracking software. If you subtract your cost per click from your earnings per click, you get your net profit per click.

(Calculating it looks like this: Net profit per click = earnings per click – cost per click.)

This is key. This is what affiliates thrive on when it comes down to it. Forget conversion rates. Forget click-through rates. Forget payouts. If your earnings per click is higher than your cost per click, you are making money. It’s as simple as that.

Most supply-side advertising platforms will provide you your cost per click, or a way to calculate your cost per click per ad by default. For instance, during my college years, I was operating as a high volume social media affiliate. The self-serve media buying platform I was pushing clicks through offered line-by-line reporting for each of my advertisements and their respective cost per clicks. To harmonize with this, my tracking platform offered earnings per click breakouts by sub ID. This meant that as long as I passed in the creative ID into a sub ID in the tracking links behind my ads, I could directly determine profit for each over any period. Split-testing on easy mode.

How to Calculate Earnings Per Click

Earnings per click is calculated by taking the total earnings you have generated over a period, and then dividing that by the number of clicks you have generated for that same period. This gives you an estimation of what you can expect each individual click you are generating to produce in earnings. This is a figure that is invaluable in a cost per click environment.

(Earnings of an individual click is calculated as total earnings over period “x” over the number of clicks over period “x”.)

3 Tips for Earnings Per Click Campaigns

1. Shop smarter. Let’s say a network approaches you with the same offer you are currently running, but with a higher payout. An attractive offer, right? In reality, this actually means nothing. Sure, the payout is higher — but what if the conversion rate is much lower? You could actually be losing money by running with this new network. This is where earnings per click becomes vitally important. If your EPC is higher on this new network than the old, you are now making more money. The conversion rate doesn’t matter. The payout doesn’t matter.

2. Test quicker. Having one metric to use as a baseline to measure performance makes split-testing a breeze. You now have the ability to juggle multiple networks, or constantly swap out links, while only having to focus on the earnings per click of those campaigns. In such a fluid, fast flowing industry, time is your most valuable asset. Calculating earnings per click gives you back time you were spending performing tedious calculations.

3. Feel safer. Fraud is, and will always be, a nagging, frustrating problem in the performance marketing world.

[bctt tweet=”Monitoring earnings per click as your anchor point facilitates a simple sense of security and control.” username=”tune”]

It is a trivial task to record and chart trends by hour, day, month, when you are only relying on a single key metric that pulls from both your gross spend and earnings. Effortless trend monitoring breeds obvious trend outliers. This empowers you, as a marketer, to focus your time on what’s critically important — performance.

A Final Thought

Running as an affiliate business means spending a lot of time looking for and testing offers. If your main goal is to make as much profit as possible, you need to optimize where you spend your time. Getting lost in numbers and metrics is easy, and if you’re not analyzing the right things, you’re wasting time and losing money.

Focusing on earnings per click may seem like too simple a solution, but it’s a quick way to ensure that you’re making money efficiently.

For more tips, check out TUNE’s Ultimate Guide to Partner Marketing.

This article was originally published in August 2016 and has been updated with new information and insights.

Let’s face it: We all know the “R” word is being thrown around daily. Companies are scaling back budgets, which inevitably means for marketers that the finance team is coming for you, too. That said, it’s worth remembering the old adage “brands should keep advertising through a recession,” which researchers and analysts have proven to be the right play. Despite the global economic outlook, ad agencies are forecasting 9-12% growth year-over-year, with digital accounting for more than 50% of the growth. Steve Grant, SVP of Human Intelligence at Horizon Media, drilled the point home recently when he said, “We’re going to make our recommendation on a case-by-case basis, but going dark is not a good thing.”   

When trying to evaluate channels and determine where it makes the most sense to prioritize, the first questions any good marketer should ask are “Where can I quickly and easily show ROI?” and “What has the lowest upfront costs?”  The answer is simple: partnership marketing. It’s the only channel where you can easily prove ROI and show that upfront costs are lower than any other channel out there. So, when the CFO says, “Show me your cost and ROI per channel,” partnership marketing stands out as the clear winner.  

In this post, we cover five ways you can continue to utilize your partnership marketing channel when the waters get choppy while still being cost-conscious.   

1. Revisit Payout Structures  

When was the last time you reviewed your payout structure? Whether you’re using a cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-lead (CPL), or cost-per-action (CPA) model, it’s OK to reevaluate how you pay your partners in order to better allocate costs to revenue.  

To get started, take a look at your performance data. Would it make sense to shift some offers from CPC to CPL, or from CPL to CPA? Are your partners meeting your conversion rate expectations? Reevaluating and restructuring payouts can be an effective way to keep traffic flowing while also ensuring you are not overspending.   

2. Remember the 80/20 Rule to Maintain Strong Relationships  

In a successful partnership program, your number one asset is your partner base. That’s why it’s important to remember the 80/20 rule, which states that 80% of your revenue will typically come from 20% of your sources. Therefore, reward the partners that provide the best results. Stay connected with your top performers, ensure they understand the value they bring to your program, and give them the tools they need to succeed.   

It is ill-advised to cut spending with top partners just because their cost may be higher. This is especially true for influencer partners. If you are not building a long-lasting relationship with your influencers, competitors will capitalize on the opportunity to poach them out from under your feet. TUNE’s Iana Starostovich says it best in her recent blog: “It’s not an exaggeration to say a great relationship can make a program, while a bad one can break it. Having good relationships with your publishing partners is key to productive cooperation, increased sales, and digital marketing growth.”  

3. Focus on Customer Targeting and Loyalty   

Before dialing back advertising budgets, see if there is an opportunity to target your ads more carefully instead. This is not the time to test the waters for new markets or audiences. If you know your target consumer listens to a certain type of podcast or subscribes to specific YouTube channels, increase your efforts in those segments to stay relevant. Studies have shown that during the 2008 financial crisis, brands that cut back ad spend saw a drop in sentiment even among loyal customers, which made room for market challengers to step in.    

Another great way to maintain your existing market is to lean into loyalty and rewards. Everyone loves a deal, and in times where wallets are tightened, consumers will flock toward the best deals available. Emphasizing loyalty and rewards programs with your current customer base is far less expensive than trying to obtain new customers.   

4. Use Partner Marketing to Tap Into Other Channels  

Because partnerships are not limited to a single medium or channel, partner marketing can be an effective way to break into new areas. You can utilize it to tap into other paid channels, such as trademark plus (TM+), email, and social. Leveraging these channels via partner marketing typically tends to be more affordable, as it maintains the pay-per-performance model while casting a broader net.   

5. Lean On Your Customer Success Manager   

At TUNE, we pride ourselves on having an industry-leading customer success team, and we hope that everyone we work with thinks of us as a partner rather than a software vendor. The TUNE CSM team is here to help you strategize and implement the above-mentioned suggestions. Backed by phenomenal Onboarding, Support, and Solutions Engineering teams, we understand the challenges that marketers are facing in the current environment and are set up to help you excel.

At the end of the day, you may not be able to maintain 100% of your ad budget, but you can control what channels you keep alive. Time and time again, partner marketing has proven to be a consistent winner for leading brands, especially in uncertain times.   

If you have questions about advertising during a recession or how TUNE can help, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at partnermarketing@tune.com. In the meantime, take a closer look at how to protect your marketing budget with performance-based advertising in our new e-book, The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Partner Marketing.

What other strategies do you have for making the most of your ad budget right now? Let us know in the comments below! 

Our industry might hate to admit it, but it’s true: There is a knowledge gap that exists between mobile marketing and affiliate marketing. And it’s been holding advertisers back for years.  

We’re here to change that with a new resource designed to bridge the gap: The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Partner Marketing. In our newest e-book, TUNE VP of Sales Nate Ivie covers everything marketers need to know to expand their affiliate activities to the mobile ecosystem. 

Download the new e-book for free!

Why Focus on Mobile Partner Marketing? 

While partner marketing has grown exponentially over the last five years, that success has rarely included mobile apps as a point of conversion.  

In the affiliate marketing industry, the general understanding of mobile web tracking remains underrepresented. We see it all the time in conversations we have with prospective clients. It doesn’t matter whether they are just starting a partner marketing program or looking to migrate from their current solution. Most of the time, there is a disconnect between how they think about mobile and how they think about affiliate. 

After over a decade at TUNE serving customers at brands, networks, and publishers across web and mobile, it’s become apparent that user acquisition managers and partner marketers must align their goals and strategies to succeed. To be able to do this, they must first understand what it is the other does. With that as the foundation, they can then learn the tools they each work with, and finally, figure out how fit it all together to maximize their return. This is how we’ll bridge the gap between mobile marketing and partner marketing. 

What You’ll Learn in the Ultimate Guide 

This one-of-a-kind e-book was designed to give user acquisition teams and partnership teams the knowledge they need to effectively expand affiliate marketing activities to the mobile ecosystem. Our goal in creating this guide is to empower these groups to do that in three specific ways:  

1. Equip partner marketers to understand completely how tracking and attribution work on both mobile app and mobile web  
2. Enable user acquisition managers to understand the possibilities partner marketing can provide  
3. Provide some common knowledge that both partner marketers and user acquisition managers can act on to work more closely together  

No matter your field of expertise, this unique e-book is sure to be a valuable resource for information and insights on the industry and your colleagues. But don’t take our word for it: download The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Partner Marketing and see for yourself! 

Ready to learn more? Head over to Part 2 of our blog series to discover the differences out why an MMP is not the same as a partner marketing platform.

Once again, Google has pushed back its deadline to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome, this time until 2024.  

Google originally announced they would phase out cross-site tracking cookies in early 2022. Last year, that plan was delayed to 2023 with the introduction of Topics, which replaced FLoC as their alternative solution. On July 27, 2022, the search giant postponed again, announcing the death of the third-party cookie in Chrome has been rescheduled for the second half of 2024. (Mark your calendar.) 

Chrome’s Third-Party Cookies Will Stay … for Now 

In a blog post, Google’s VP of the Privacy Sandbox Anthony Chavez wrote that the delay was spurred on by “input from developers, publishers, marketers, and regulators” across the industry: 

“The most consistent feedback we’ve received is the need for more time to evaluate and test the new Privacy Sandbox technologies before deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome. This feedback aligns with our commitment to the CMA [the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority] to ensure that the Privacy Sandbox provides effective, privacy-preserving technologies and the industry has sufficient time to adopt these new solutions. … For these reasons, we are expanding the testing windows for the Privacy Sandbox APIs before we disable third-party cookies in Chrome.” 

– Anthony Chavez, VP of the Privacy Sandbox at Google

Google’s Updated Timeline 

It’s clear both Google and the ecosystem at large were feeling the pressure of the looming deadline. Now, both developers and the public will have more time to test the new privacy features Google has been building as part of its Privacy Sandbox initiative.  

Here’s a summary of Google’s updated timeline and what it entails:  

1. August 2022 – Privacy Sandbox trials expand to millions of Chrome users globally (they are already available to developers for testing) 

2. Q3 2022 through Q2 2023 – Trial populations are gradually increased  

3. Q3 2023 – Privacy Sandbox APIs are launched and generally available in Chrome 

4. Second half of 2024 – Third-party cookies will begin to be phased out in Chrome 

What’s Next for Partner Marketing? 

As an advertiser, the most important thing to remember is this: the death of the third-party cookie has not been cancelled — only delayed. If you are not prepared for the cookieless future, then you just caught a lucky break. But the end is still coming, and you will need a privacy-centric solution if you want to measure your marketing efforts in the years ahead. 

That’s where we come in.

The TUNE Partner Marketing Platform provides native server-side tracking solutions that allow marketers to get granular without invading anyone’s privacy. You can learn the basics about server-side tracking in our pixels vs postbacks article. For an in-depth look at this and other cookieless methods, download our guide to tracking marketing campaigns. Or simply click here to chat with us, and we’ll be happy to walk you through it. 

The death of the third-party cookie is inevitable. Now there’s just a little more time to prepare for it. 

As we look back at 2021, it’s worth acknowledging the continual disruptions many are feeling coming out of this year, not simply from a business or industry perspective, but through our daily lives. While we collectively navigate the new world, a sense of whatever “normal” meant before is slowly showing its face again. Based on some of Google’s consumer insight trends for the year, people started going out to eat more frequently. Weddings were held after months, or even years, of delays. Movie theaters began filling up again.

Still, a seismic shift in the martech world that was already in motion gained a huge advantage in 2021 with work-from-home coming into focus for many people. The advertising game changed, and convenience-driven brands like DoorDash continued their path to dominance. The evolution of technologies like Zoom amplified a virtual life where people tried hard to replicate the real thing. Looking back, there is no shortage of interesting topics to talk about. Here, we review some of the top trends we noticed across the digital and partner marketing ecosystems in 2021.

2021 Digital and Partner Marketing Trends

E-commerce Takes Center Stage

Digital commerce has been around for decades, but the last year has proven just how powerful the partnerships channel is for business growth. With brick-and-mortar traffic stuck between mandated regulations and personal preference, shopping online has experienced a boom in more ways than one. Brands with long-established affiliate marketing programs are starting to think differently about the channel’s potential. What was once viewed as a secondary, direct-response channel at best – riddled with transparency and contribution challenges – has evolved into its next form; one that allows brands to tap into customers in several unique ways.

New business sprang onto the scene, the “buy now, pay later” movement exploded, and personalization became even more critical in a brand’s playbook. The fintech market has seen an uptick in businesses driving the emerging cryptocurrency and NFT (non-fungible token) verticals, and REIT (real estate investment trust) and fractional investing started making its way into the average person’s portfolio. Gaming and work-from-home brands boomed with a significant number of people spending more time away from their corporate offices. Esports competitions are expected to exceed $1 billion in revenue by the end of this year, and it’s easy to understand why.

Traditionally siloed marketing teams now interplay more than ever, pushing the omni-channel boundaries where they can consciously diversify their traffic sources. PR doesn’t have to be a “halo effect” anymore – we can track that more cleanly than ever – and can build on deep relationships with publishers who understand a brand’s customer. Search is no longer relegated to positions one and two on results pages, and SEO now has a broader home as external content sites help evangelize the core business mission. Executive teams are starting to appreciate a more diverse mix of partners to help drive their acquisition strategy and, anecdotally, seem more inclined to trust them to test into the unknown.

The Creator Economy Evolves

Over the last several years, a new generation of partnerships emerged that places more emphasis on authentic brand engagement: the creator economy. Influencers, brand ambassadors, and personal entrepreneurs took to their YouTube and Instagram channels to support businesses, ushering in a new era of social direct response that wasn’t just paying for Facebook ads, where costs continue to rise and a fight for privacy drags on. TikTok took the world by storm and didn’t show any signs of slowing down; their growth this year speaks for itself.

We’ve started to see a similar-but-different approach when working with true influencers versus content creators. The former is defined by generally talking about brands and products they like (with or without paid endorsement) on their established Instagram, YouTube, blog, or other digital channels. However, content creators are typically building new content specific to the brand or products they are supporting (again, often with paid endorsement) and attaching their personal flair to engage their direct audience.
 

“One thing that comes to mind for me is the new distinction between ‘influencers’ vs. ‘content creators.’ Influencers are recognized because of their high follower count, not necessarily engagement. Content creators actually spend time, thought, and energy into creating content that resonates with brands and audiences. On the surface, they’re one and the same, but in 2021, brands focused more on content quality as opposed to number of followers. They saw a higher ROAS from micro- and nano-influencers — smaller followers with higher engagement.”

– Tie Davidson, Partnerships Manager, TUNE

 
It’s great when brands can get their A-list celebrity endorsements, but often, they come at a high cost and often lack a sincere connection, which is arguably more important in the long run than immediate return on investment. The nano-, micro-, and macro-influencer communities are a potent antidote to traditional marketing. Despite fewer followers than the mega-stars, these content creators tap into their audiences with personalized, vulnerable, and relatable content. It’s much easier to understand the value of a product or service through someone else’s experience when that someone feels real and genuine.

Many brands have finally accepted the importance of this channel and are hiring talent to navigate the growing industry. More emphasis is now placed on bringing in managers who understand the influencer space and know how to tap into the right combination of talent, authenticity, and charisma to source the best creators. And yes, in case you’re wondering, influencers are here to stay for a while.

Smarter Data and Better Privacy Are Non-Negotiable

Can you remember the last time an app or a website didn’t ask if it was OK to track you?

Driven primarily by changes to the Apple and Google ecosystems, privacy and compliance continue to write a major narrative. Brands are forced to compete with changing policies that, at least on the surface, seem designed to protect people’s information. It’s a tough sell in a world that’s relied so heavily on third-party cookies for advertising targeting, and the partner marketing landscape is no different. With cookies quickly becoming a relic of the past, brands need partners and technologies they can trust to treat customer information with the right sensitivity. Proper data hygiene isn’t just important for your business, it’s critical.

In the past, a common challenge for many brands has been properly tracking and attributing results from their partner channels. This challenge was amplified when non-traditional partners (talking to you, influencers and podcasters) were added to the equation. Yes, you can have a tracking link with UTMs appended to a YouTube video or a swipe-up Instagram story, but as many brands have learned recently, Google Analytics is not the right tool for this job.

Plenty of businesses don’t rely on Google Analytics to track these campaigns, but far too many still do. By and large, Google’s solution is one of the lowest barriers for entry when a brand wants to kick off a partner marketing or influencer program with little impact to their tech stack. However, an increasing appetite for better insights is coming to the forefront as we enter 2022.

Read more about TUNE’s commitment to topics like GDPR, CCPA, and SOC compliance.

Consumers Lean Toward Authentic, Socially Conscious Brands

The shifting economy and a new generation of consumers drove many established brands to rethink their strategies in 2021. Meanwhile, a new legion of high-growth businesses has stepped in to fill gaps in the market; several of these are focusing on specific customer needs, long-standing pain points, and expanding traditional verticals to new limits. Is investing, crypto, or blockchain just too confusing to figure out? Tired of shopping at the same big-box retailers who may or may not be transparent in their production process? Ready to take that online course to learn coding during the weekend? New business growth has taken on new life in 2021 and, when paired with credible intent, is creating factions of loyal consumers.

The fourth wall has cracked. Consumers want brands to spark a legitimate connection with their values and needs. They need personalized, curated experiences (just don’t ask them to accept cookies…) before they will allow a product or service into their life.

While this shift may be new to some companies, many established brands are already playing their part to great success. One example is Patagonia, which announced it would donate 100% of their Black Friday revenue in 2021 to support environmental sustainability. The result? Patagonia saw a record-breaking $10 million in sales, five times more than they expected to bring in. Their site traffic has also seen a nice jump of over 47% from last year, as they continue to strike a social nerve with a consistent, purpose-driven message.

Acquisitions and Consolidation

There are always new partners, technologies, and agencies coming on to the scene, and 2021 saw a lot of consolidation across the media and marketing mix. Some agencies made the decision to join forces like Gen3 adding to its roster by bringing on Oak Digital, or Acceleration Partners and Streamline Marketing banding together, shifting the services dynamics.

Competitive fatigue and a wildly shifting economy has pushed several media companies to unify businesses for a healthier long-term outlook. Many of these brands share a similar customer base and strategic approach, so it’s not difficult to see why joining forces is attractive. From ironSource acquiring Tapjoy to Meredith joining forces with Dotdash, the new era of media giants is being born again. Even the Goliath that is Experian is taking out its checkbook in favor of product diversification and in recognition of the high-growth insurance technology vertical.

Influencer agencies and content creator managers are primed for heavy growth this coming year and should expect an increase in marketing dollars being pushed in their direction. Content publishers and mobile-first brands will continue to drive massive influence across all aspects of the digital landscape, with the partnerships channel seated at the intersection of the next stage.

Conclusion

As 2021 comes to a close, now more than ever we must accept that change is constant and no one can predict the future.

Consumers are simultaneously searching for more relatable experiences while rejecting much of traditional advertising; if you don’t have a proper mobile strategy, prioritize building one immediately. It’s more critical than ever for brands to implement a conversational marketing approach that speaks to consumers on a human level, and lean on their base of creators to develop uniquely crafted content. Attention spans are shortening, with short-form video becoming a much bigger factor as it is created and consumed by increasingly younger audiences on new apps and social media platforms.

Businesses with a purpose-driven or philanthropic message will continue to strike social nerves and chip away at market share. Convenience and technology-forward brands will keep developing new products and features to compete with emerging businesses in their vertical and a more diverse e-commerce landscape. And the partnerships industry will become one of the most valuable channels as more and more brands look to accomplish these goals in 2022.

Questions about adding partnerships to your marketing mix in 2022? Get in touch with us at sales@tune.com, or request a demo of the TUNE Partner Marketing Platform today.

Learn more about the partner marketing ecosystem in our Ultimate Guide to Partner Marketing e-book and blog series.

Today, the NCAA puts in play a policy that allows college athletes to get paid for their name, image, and likeness (NIL). This is a giant step forward for an institution that has been widely criticized in popular culture, from Barack Obama to “South Park,” for not allowing for their athletes to be paid, even as those athletes generated millions of dollars in revenue for their schools (or had difficulty affording campus meals).

This is also a giant step forward for affiliates around the world and the partnership ecosystem at large. In this blog post, I explain what’s going on and why it’s a big deal for the affiliate marketing industry. 

What Is NIL? 

NIL refers to a student-athlete’s name, image, and likeness — in other words, their brand. 

Traditionally, athletes in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) have not been allowed to endorse any commercial product or service, even if they were not getting paid to do so.

One of the most glaring examples of NCAA athletes not being compensated for the use of their NIL is the NCAA Football video game franchise developed by EA Sports. The similar EA Sports NFL franchise, Madden, pays NFL players more than $16,000 per player to use their NIL in each game, due to NFL players having a union to represent them (NFL Players Association).

What’s Happening Today with NIL and the NCAA?

Starting today, college athletes can take advantage of two major changes in the NCAA’s NIL policies and finally start getting paid.

• Players are allowed to be compensated for third-party endorsements related to athletics, without school or conference involvement. 
• Players are allowed to be compensated for other student-athlete opportunities, such as social media, new businesses, and personal appearances, without institutional involvement or the use of trademarks/logos.

This obviously opens the door to massive amounts of marketing opportunities for both brands and athletes.

But how easy can it be to work with 18- to 22-year-old college athletes? Can they even provide value? Is there a way to scale quickly? We analyze some of these questions below. 

Do College Athletes Have Scalable Reach? 

Most college athletes will be what the influencer marketing industry calls “micro-influencers,” usually ranging between 1,000 to 5,000 social media followers.

Typical micro-influencers, though, have some sort of niche or focus for their content like fashion, technology, fitness, etc. It’s safe to say that, up until now, most college athletes were likely using their social channels to be regular college kids — posting pics of vacations, arguing with friends about whether Lebron James is better than Michael Jordan, or posting choreographed dances on TikTok. So it’s still to be determined if the everyday college athlete will be a valuable influencer.

Where it gets interesting is with the most well-known college athletes, where you might be surprised at how much reach they actually have. Darren Rovell of Action Network recently listed his “Top 20 Athletes who are favorites to Capitalize on Name, Image & Likeness” and the list gives you an idea of how much scale is becoming available to advertisers (top 5 listed below):

1. Spencer Rattler, Oklahoma Football 
Instagram: 377K followers, Twitter: 62.7K followers 

2. Olivia Dunne, LSU Gymnastics 
TikTok: 3.9M followers, Instagram: 1.1 million followers, Twitter: 7,372 followers 

3. Shareef O’Neal, LSU Basketball 
Instagram: 2.7 million followers, Twitter: 322,000 followers 

4. Haley Cavinder & Hanna Cavinder, Fresno State Basketball 
Haley — Instagram: 255K followers, Twitter: 4,577 followers
Hanna — Instagram: 251K followers, Twitter: 4,553 followers

5. Bryce Young, Alabama Football 
Instagram: 82.3K followers, Twitter: 16K followers. 

These are some serious numbers to pay attention to, especially for athletes who most likely have the young followers that brands are always after. What will be interesting is to see who steps up and how to help student athletes navigate these new waters of influencer marketing.

Is Anyone Doing Anything to Help Athletes Navigate NIL?

One of the most difficult parts of these opportunities to work with college athletes is going to be something a lot of marketers already have difficulty with when it comes to dealing with influencers. I’d bet many athletes aren’t going to be too inclined to use different technologies to grab links/coupon codes/creatives, and they’ve never worked in a professional marketing environment before. Being able to successfully work through these difficulties will be vital.

One company that is working specifically on NIL marketing is Opendorse. They already work with some very high-profile professional athletes, and they have launched new NIL solutions for college athletes. The company has direct partnerships with a number of Division 1 conferences and individual schools like Clemson, Texas, and Ohio State, and will no doubt make it easier to reach individual college athletes at scale.

Schools themselves are also putting resources together to help their athletes. We saw the USC basketball team recently create logos for every player on the team in hopes of allowing those athletes to capitalize on their personal brand. They’ve also hired a consulting firm to work on NIL strategy for all of their athletes spanning 21 different sports. 

TUNE also has tools to help marketers and athletes take advantage of NIL opportunities. The TUNE platform allows you to create an affiliate account for an NIL influencer in seconds and have a working tracking link or promo code in their hands in minutes.

Our tagging functionality will allow you to pay close attention to your NIL influencers to make sure they are staying compliant with NCAA regulations, and they can stay actively promoting your products or services.

You’ll also be able to pay out NIL influencers for one-time brand deals as well as performance-based campaigns, providing flexibility in how you structure these new relationships.

Any Idea What Sort of Campaigns Will Work? 

To start, it seems pretty clear that brand deals will be the first opportunities available for college athletes: a flat fee for a post or a shoutout in a story, etc.

Sports-related brands should also be some of the first to adopt college athlete influencers. We expect brands like Fanatics, Nike, and StockX to fully take advantage of this opportunity early on. GoPuff appears to be the first advertiser to offer all college athletes the opportunity to get paid for their NIL with a partnership with Opendorse. Examples of opportunities that could be interesting could be something like Shareef O’Neal and his dad (Shaq) hosting a watch party on Scener to watch the new “Space Jam” on HBOMax.

Looking Ahead 

To sum it all up, there are tons of opportunities for marketers to get creative with how they dip their toes into the NIL waters, especially now that platforms are making it easier, from Instagram expanding link-sharing features to TikTok releasing business tools. We can’t wait to see what they come up with.

Questions or comments? We want to hear from you — start a chat with us here.

Photo by Rita Morais on Unsplash

Despite that echoing refrain that pops up year after year, affiliate marketing is far from dying. In fact, it’s thriving: affiliate marketing spend hit $5.4 billion in the U.S. in 2017, and is predicted to reach $8.2 billion by 2022. And the industry already generates 16% of all online orders — the same amount as email marketing. That makes affiliate marketing one of the top four biggest sources of e-commerce orders, beating out both display advertising and social commerce.

As members of the partner marketing ecosystem, affiliates are a valuable resource for brands looking to grow incrementally while maximizing ROI. (We would know; HasOffers, TUNE’s previous brand name, is the original software for affiliate networks, and we’ve been writing about the industry for years.)

Yet the cries of Affiliate marketing is dead! continue. That’s why we’re going back to the basics in this post to cover the what, who, and how of affiliate marketing — so you can make your own informed decision about the health of the industry.

Let’s get started.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing in a nutshell.

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance marketing. It is one of many partnership-driven marketing strategies that exist under the umbrella of partner marketing.

In affiliate marketing, an individual (the affiliate) earns a commission for promoting an advertiser’s product. Commissions are usually based on the sales or revenue the affiliate generates for the advertiser; this is called revenue sharing. However, commissions can also be earned for leads or clicks, and be paid as a flat payout, tiered rate, set percentage plus a fixed amount, or a number of other ways.

You probably see affiliate marketing in action a dozen times a day. When a beauty blogger reviews a new makeup collection and links to it on her blog. When a “Bachelor in Paradise” star reveals the contents of their latest subscription box on Facebook, then encourages fans to purchase it with a unique promo code. When a website displays an ad in the sidebar for a camera, and the website publisher receives a commission for every purchase the ad drives.

Today, affiliate programs exist for almost every business and industry out there: big box stores, hotel chains, airlines, credit services, fashion, subscription economy boxes, home improvement, gaming, online retailers, gig economy apps, dating services, e-learning, real estate, cryptocurrency, health and wellness, sports, beauty brands, DTC retailers, SaaS companies, et cetera ad infinitum. Not surprising, given that 81% of brands were already leveraging affiliate marketing programs in 2016, and the industry’s only grown since.

Who Are the Main Players in Affiliate Marketing?

For those just getting started, it can be difficult to lock down exactly who is who and who does what in the affiliate marketing ecosystem. It doesn’t help that many terms in the industry are interchangeable or loosely defined. Before you begin to build an affiliate program, you should understand these key terms:

Affiliate Program
(also known as a partner program, affiliate marketing program, or partner marketing program)

A program offered by an advertiser that provides affiliate marketers a way to earn compensation in exchange for promoting a product or service. In an affiliate marketing program, affiliates are paid by the advertiser when a predetermined measurable action occurs. This action can be a purchase, form fill, registration, download, or other conversion.  

Advertiser
(also known as a brand, marketer, merchant, or seller)

An owner of a product or service looking to pay affiliates to drive traffic to their website and/or app, with the goal of increasing revenue. In other words, someone with something to sell. Examples: a retailer looking to sell athletic shoes, a subscription box company looking for new subscribers, a real estate firm looking for new leads.

Affiliate
(also known as a publisher or partner)

A marketer who promotes advertiser products and services by driving traffic to their websites and/or apps through paid or non-paid channels. They generate revenue for the advertiser and earn a commission each time a predetermined measurable action occurs, such as a purchase or registration. An affiliate is the owner of a website, app, or other marketing channel where the advertisement can be promoted. Examples: personal blogs, Instagram profiles, podcasts, major news websites, gaming apps.

For example, if an advertiser wants to sell athletic shoes, they may choose to partner with several affiliates who run sports blogs. These affiliates have gathered audiences who align well with the advertiser’s target market. The advertiser provides a tracking link, which records each unique affiliate and the traffic they drive to the shoe website. The beautiful part about affiliate marketing is that everything is transparent and performance-based, so the advertiser only pays when a sale occurs.

Customer
(also known as a consumer, user, visitor, or traffic)

No surprises here; the customer is you and me — the ones buying the products being sold by advertisers and promoted by affiliates. In technical terms, traffic can be considered the actions that are measurable against an ad. Impressions (ad view), clicks (ad click), and conversions (ad engagement) are the most common.

In our example, the customer would click the tracking link in the athletic shoe promotion on the affiliate’s sports blog. If they ultimately purchase the shoes, the advertiser pays the affiliate a commission.

Affiliate Tracking Software
(also known as a performance marketing platform, partner marketing platform, affiliate marketing software, or affiliate program software)

Software that empowers businesses to measure and manage their performance-based partnerships directly through one unified dashboard. (TUNE is an example of affiliate tracking software.)

After the predetermined action occurs, affiliate tracking software acts as the glue that ties together the referral from the affiliate and the conversion from the advertiser, making accurate attribution and compensation possible.

Affiliate Network
(also known as an ad network or network)

A company that acts as a relationship liaison for advertisers and affiliates. Networks help advertisers remain free to focus on their products and services, and affiliates remain free to focus on publishing and promoting offers. In other words, the middleman that connects all the pieces.

For some advertisers, affiliate networks provide additional value and insight, but it comes at additional cost. Affiliate networks typically specialize in managing both advertisers and affiliates in the context of an affiliate marketing program.

For a more visual representation of this ecosystem, check out this post on our favorite performance and affiliate marketing infographics.

How Does an Affiliate Program Attribute and Pay? 

In addition to what’s covered above, there are a few other important details you’ll want to know about affiliate marketing. These details vary among affiliate marketing campaigns and should be managed by the advertiser’s affiliate tracking software. Namely:

Attribution Windows

The maximum time period during which a conversion event can be claimed by an affiliate. Let’s say an affiliate drives a consumer to visit a website, and that same consumer comes back seven days later and makes a purchase. If the attribution window is 30 days, the affiliate will get credit for that purchase. If the attribution window is 36 hours, they won’t. (This is why affiliates usually prefer longer windows versus shorter ones.)

Attribution Methods

We don’t want to get too far into the weeds here, but you may hear terms like client-side tracking, pixel tracking, cookieless tracking, server-side tracking, and postback tracking thrown around a lot. These are all different attribution methods, and each has its pros and cons.

Many of these terms overlap or only vary slightly, but those small differences matter. For example, pixel tracking is also known as client-side, cookie-based, and in-browser tracking. It’s one of the easiest ways for performance marketers to measure on the web, as it relies on cookies stored in users’ browsers, but can be affected by ad blocking measures. It also doesn’t work when it comes to mobile apps.

Postback tracking is a TUNE invention that is also known as server-side, server call, server-to-server, server postback, and cookieless tracking. Postback tracking is more technically complex to set up, but is much more reliable and accurate than pixel tracking, as two servers handle the entire process. Postback tracking also works on mobile apps and mobile web. You can read more about the differences in our pixels versus postbacks article.

Payout

There is no hard and fast rule for how to pay an affiliate for the results they drive. As mentioned above, revenue share models pay commissions that are based on the sales the affiliate generates. But commissions can also be earned for conversions other than sales, such as leads, clicks, registrations, form fills, and others. These can be paid out as a flat fee, in tiered rates, as a set percentage plus a fixed amount, in dynamic payouts, and many other variations and mixtures of payout structures and payment models.

When determining partner payouts, remember that different companies, industries, and affiliates will prefer or require different methods. There are also a variety of factors to consider, like how much influence a given affiliate has, how engaged their audience is, how much a brand wants to work with them, and how niche their market is.

What Should Affiliate Marketing Programs Measure?

Since affiliate marketing is a type of performance marketing, measurement is an essential part of the process. Here are a few things you’ll want to track, analyze, and optimize in your affiliate marketing program:

• Clicks: A click interaction with an affiliate tracking link
• Affiliate sales: Income generated by affiliates
• Revenue: Total income generated for the brand from all sources
• Cost per click: How much it costs to get a user to click on an affiliate promotion, paid as a flat amount
• Cost per sale: The percentage of the total sale amount that an affiliate earns for driving the sale (good where multiple items may be added to a shopping cart)
• Cost per lead: How much it costs to acquire a prospective customer, paid as a flat amount
• Conversion rate: The percentage of how many clicks turn into completed actions (click to sale, click to registration, click to download, etc.)
• Return on ad spend: How many sales result from the total money spent on advertising, which informs how much revenue is generated (or in some cases lost) per dollar spent
• Top affiliates: An advertiser will want to know their top-performing partners and affiliates so they can allocate more advertising and resources to them
• Affiliate referrals: Incentives for existing affiliates to recruit new affiliates to a program
• Program diversity: How many different types of affiliates and audiences a program covers

Affiliate Marketing’s Best Year Yet

Whatever you decide about the health of the affiliate marketing industry in 2021, we’ll be here with plenty of resources to support your performance and partner marketing goals. Check out the TUNE Blog to learn more about the industry’s most flexible partner marketing platform, or visit our resource library for how-to guides, best practices, and other educational materials.

Ready to learn more? Here are some of our top partner and affiliate marketing resources:

• The Ultimate Guide to Partner Marketing (e-book)
• Lessons Learned: How a Clear Strategy Can Prevent Costly Mistakes in Your Affiliate Program (on-demand webinar)
• 10 Mistakes to Avoid When Starting an Affiliate Program (e-book)

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

There’s no better time to freak out about a future partner marketing strategy than the present. Don’t sweat. We’re here to help.

In this blog post, we’ll give you the tools you need to ensure that all of your performance partnerships are set up for success.

▢   Set Clear, Achievable Goals

As affiliate marketing continues to grow in popularity, many advertisers have watched their partner marketing programs become their top channel, outpacing even display advertising and paid reviews. The clearer you are on your affiliate KPIs or influencer milestones, the easier it will be to design your partner marketing strategy and measure its success.

Goals to consider include:

• Short-term or long-term: Are you building a partner marketing strategy for an upcoming product launch (a one-off or short-term approach), or for ongoing customer acquisition and sales? Knowing whether your goal lies six months or six years down the road is key.
• Target customer: Who is the ideal customer in your partner program? Are you attempting to get new customers, or re-engage old ones? Are you trying to attract customers away from a competitor, find them from a new source, or improve conversion with an audience you have targeted for a while?
• Specific outcome: What would you like your affiliates and campaigns to produce? Is it new sales, email subscribers, app downloads, or something else altogether?

If you’re brand new to affiliate marketing, this first section may seem overwhelming already. If that’s the case, see our related post, Partner Marketing 101: What Is Affiliate Marketing? for a comprehensive guide on everything you need to know to get ramped up. And if you’re starting your own program, be sure to check out our Ultimate Guide to Partner Marketing — it’s a step-by-step guide with everything you need to know to succeed.

▢   Craft the Perfect Partner Portfolio

After determining the goals for your program, begin brainstorming what your ideal partners look like. This will help you align your partner marketing strategies with your goals, and lead to the most effective portfolio for your business.

To find the right partners, first think about the demographics that make up your target audience: where your potential customers shop, what they read, which social media platforms they use, the types of products they buy, whether they are more likely to browse and buy on mobile or on desktop, and so on. Then, take this information and match it to any partners that fit the bill. (Yes, even if that partner is an affiliate named Kim Kardashian, and your budget is so not on her level.)

Once you’ve figured out an affiliate dream team, use their profiles as guidelines for building your perfect portfolio.

Keep in mind that a healthy mix of partners can minimize your potential risk. Don’t want all those eggs in one basket, after all. Consider selecting profiles that vary across social media platforms (Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, etc.) and formats (video, native, blog, display, etc.) to diversify your program.

Even current customers can be part of your portfolio. Referral programs can bring incremental value to your business, but their effectiveness is dependent on the kind of product or service you provide. Also note that the way you interact with and reward your referral program members will differ from your partner marketing program. For a good example, check out Blue Apron or Thrive Market, which incentivize current customers to share referral links to drive new customers in exchange for discounts on future orders.

▢   Determine Payout Structure

Once you decide on your dream portfolio, you’ll want to determine what’s realistic to pay them based on your budget. Kim Kardashian might be your perfect marketing partner, for example, but she’s not going to be affordable for everyone. (And depending on your goals, she may not even be your best option.) So determine early on what kind of payout structure works best for your brand — and for your affiliates.

There are five main types of partner payouts:

1. Cost per Action (CPA): Action essentially means conversion, whatever that may be (sale, download, registration, etc.). This is the most common payout method for offers.
2. Cost per Sale (CPS): This is a set percentage of the total sale of a conversion.
3. Cost per Conversion plus Cost per Sale: With this option, you are setting a flat payout amount as well as specifying a percentage of a sale amount on top of that. This is essentially a combination of the two above payout types.
4. Cost per Click (CPC): Instead of paying out on conversion, you can also set a flat payout on click, and each unique click will receive a payout.
5. Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM): If you are interested in tracking impressions instead of clicks and conversions, this option is set to pay out for every 1,000 impressions.

Payouts can be made a variety of ways as well, from flat rates to dynamically tiered commissions. With the right platform, payouts can be as flexible as you are. 

▢   Create Click-Worthy Content

Once you’ve determined your partner marketing strategy for portfolios and payouts, it’s a good idea to create a content marketing plan. Yes, you can leave it up to influencers and affiliates to promote your brand to their audience in a way they know will resonate. However, usually it’s useful to prepare resources ahead of time. You’ll want to put together content like swipe copy, banner ads, logos, images, and/or videos, depending on your chosen platforms.

You’ll also want to make sure your program looks presentable, reputable, and dependable from the affiliate’s point of view. Try out these 10 tips to find super affiliates to attract the best kinds of partners to your program.

▢   Plan to Keep Affiliates Engaged

Now that you’re prepared for your program, it’s time to go out and connect with your new partners. Some businesses reach out to specific influencers directly, while others turn to specialty affiliate networks to act as a liaison between the two sides of the performance relationship. Other companies leverage current customers as part of a referral program.

If your partner marketing strategy is based around a specific product or promotion, you can create an affiliate marketing calendar to train your partners on how to use your content and set schedules for when to promote it. If your strategy is more ongoing, make it easy for affiliates to find your content in their account or on your website, so they can quickly and regularly share with their networks.

Some brands even find it useful to hire an affiliate manager or an agency to handle their relationships, share new content and promotions, and provide other helpful information or services.

Whatever you decide, here’s an example of how to keep in touch: every month, send out a newsletter to your program that shares upcoming contests, coupons, and promotions. This can help to ensure your partners are always in the know about your brand, and can make it easier for them to come up with new marketing material for their followers.

In addition, chances are high that your partners will have questions about payouts, procedure, technology, and lots of other things. It’s a good idea to have one place for everyone to get everything they need, whether that’s a pure SaaS platform like TUNE, or an exclusive affiliate network, or something else entirely. 

▢   Adopt the Mantra “Measure, Optimize, Repeat”

Once your partner marketing strategy is underway, it’s time to measure performance. Keep track of which affiliates perform best — either by new leads, customers, or both. Also note the platforms, time of day, locations, etc. that deliver the best results. The more you can drill into your performance data to fine-tune your program, the more return you will see for your money.

Remember: Successful partner programs don’t come together overnight. They are the result of a lot of tweaks, failures, and optimizations in content, relationship management, and measurement over time. And you can do this!

Your Best Partner Marketing Strategy Awaits

To learn more about building your best partner marketing strategy yet, download our Ultimate Guide to Partner Marketing. Then head on over to the TUNE blog to keep up with the latest news, insights, and advice on performance partnerships.

Questions? Drop us a line. We’re here to help you succeed!

This post was originally published in November 2018 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

You’ve heard us say “cut out the cookies” in our tracking guide. That’s because cookies are bad for your health — your tracking health, that is. In the context of performance-based advertising (or affiliate marketing), what this really means is third-party tracking cookies will compromise your campaigns. First-party tracking cookies aren’t great for them, either, but there are important differences between the two. 

Recently, we’ve heard that some of you have questions about these cookies, so we’re answering them. In this post, we’re crumbling the tracking cookie to show you what it’s really made of, addressing the differences between first- and third-party cookies, and reviewing why relying only on cookie-based tracking will only hurt you in the end. 

Browser Cookies: A Bite-Sized History

While the internet has been around in some form since the 1960s, it didn’t evolve into the World Wide Web we know today until 1991. The first websites were basic, clunky, and far from user friendly, but their commercial potential was obvious. 

However, unlike brick and mortar businesses, websites had no way of knowing who was walking in the door, so to speak. Every user was anonymous, so websites offered every user the same experience — a poor one.

That all changed in 1994, when Lou Montulli invented the HTTP cookie.

An employee of Netscape, Montulli had been tasked to find a way to store incomplete transaction information in a user’s computer, rather than a business’s servers. His solution was a browser-based “cookie,” or a piece of data that could be stored by a web browser on a user’s computer. (He borrowed the term from “magic cookie,” a data file used in programming.) 

Suddenly, cookies made it relatively easy for a website to collect, store, and monetize visitor data. So, naturally, every website started using them. 

Different Types of Cookies

Cookies improve user experience. They make it possible for websites to remember user preferences, store items in shopping carts, and do a thousand other useful things. Cookies also perform essential functions on the web, such as authentication. Some of these jobs are more sensitive than others, or require specialized functionality, so different “types” of cookies exist to handle different tasks. 

(We say “types” in quotation marks because, technically, every cookie is the same type of file. They can contain the same information and functionality. What’s different is how they are created and used.)

Some types of cookies include:

• Session cookies
• Persistent cookies
• Secure cookies
• HTTP-only cookies
• SameSite cookies (of Google Chrome 80 fame)
• First-party cookies
• Third-party cookies

If you’re a digital marketer, you’ll recognize the persistent cookie, just maybe not by name. 

A persistent cookie is simply a cookie that expires after a specific date or time frame. Until it expires, a persistent cookie will share its information every time the user interacts with the domain it belongs to. This interaction can be on the website where the cookie was created, or via a resource belonging to the original website that is hosted by a different publisher, like a banner ad. 

For this reason, persistent cookies are also called tracking cookies. 

Tracking Cookies: First-Party vs Third-Party

Tracking cookies come in two flavors: first-party and third-party. The “party” in both terms refers to the website that sets the cookie. 

First-Party Cookies

First-party cookies are set directly by the website you’re on, either by the publisher’s web server or JavaScript loaded on the website, and only the same domain can access them. The domain of a first-party cookie will be the same as the domain in your browser’s address bar.

As first-party cookies come from a trusted source — the website you’re actively visiting — browsers allow them by default. That’s generally a good thing, because these cookies enable much of the functionality you’re used to when browsing the web. 

If first-party cookies were blocked, you would have to log in to your favorite website every time you visited. You wouldn’t be able to purchase multiple items while shopping online, because your cart would reset with every item you add to it. And so on.

You can still choose to disable first-party cookies in any browser, or delete them at will — just don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Third-Party Cookies

Third-party cookies are not set by the website you’re on. Instead, they are set by an external server (e.g., a tracking platform) via a piece of code loaded on the website you are visiting. These cookies can then be accessed on any website that loads the code from the same third-party server. Since they share information across websites, third-party cookies are also known as cross-site cookies.

Third-party cookies are used in online advertising because they make it easy for marketers to collect data about consumers and use it to serve relevant ads across the internet. Unfortunately, many websites use third-party cookies to collect this data without the consumer’s knowledge, mine unnecessary personal and behavioral information, and track users wherever they go online. These practices have led to increased global scrutiny and mistrust of the digital advertising industry and driven new legislation to protect consumer privacy and data security.

Browser support for third-party tracking cookies is rapidly declining. Many major browsers now block them by default, and others have announced plans to phase them out entirely:

• In Safari and iOS, Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) blocks all third-party tracking cookies by default. (Remember ITP 2.0? It started the shift towards cookie blocking in late 2018.)
• In Firefox, Mozilla’s Enhanced Tracking Protection blocks all third-party tracking cookies by default.
• Google announced in January 2020 plans to phase out support for third-party cookies in Chrome within two years, while Chrome’s Incognito mode now blocks all third-party cookies by default.

Should You Use Cookies in Performance Marketing?

We admit it — not all cookies are bad. The internet as we know it couldn’t work without first-party cookies. Tracking cookies, however, are a different story.

When we tell you to cut out the cookies in our white paper, we mean tracking cookies in general, and third-party tracking cookies in particular. But even first-party cookies, when used for digital tracking purposes, have limitations and drawbacks. 

Third-Party Cookies and Pixel Tracking

Third-party cookies and web browsers power pixel tracking, also called client-side tracking or cookie-based tracking. Cookies are simple, and web browsers do all the work of storing and sending information in pixel tracking, so it’s easy to implement and use. Unfortunately, cookies are also easy for browsers to block, users to delete, and bad actors to leverage, leaving marketers and their campaigns at risk. Not to mention, pixel tracking works only on desktop web.

Pros: Easy to set up and share data. 

Cons: Inaccurate, unreliable, prone to fraud, doesn’t work on mobile, doesn’t work in browsers where third-party tracking cookies are blocked (i.e. Apple’s Safari, Mozilla’s Firefox, and soon Google’s Chrome).

First-Party Cookies and JavaScript SDK Tracking

First-party cookies can be used as third-party tracking cookies in certain situations. This can bypass some browser restrictions, but it’s not a panacea for pixel tracking.

TUNE’s version of this tracking method is called JavaScript SDK tracking. It uses a JavaScript code snippet and first-party cookies, and still makes the browser do all the work. Therefore, it’s still susceptible to some of the same risks and limitations as pixel tracking. For example, Safari deletes all first-party cookies (and other script-writable storage) after 7 days without user interaction. If you use this tracking method, then your conversion windows on any Apple device are capped at one week. We go into more detail on the effects of Apple’s anti-tracking measures here.

Pros: Works on desktop web and mobile web, more reliable than pixel tracking, less sensitive to browser restrictions.

Cons: Implementation is more complex than pixel tracking, browser and cookie restrictions still apply, cannot track cross-channel, difficult to troubleshoot.

Conclusion: Cut Out the Cookies, Pivot to Postbacks

We stand by our point: All tracking cookies, whether first-party or third-party, will hurt your tracking health in the end. When superior solutions like postbacks are available, there’s no need to risk your campaign health with either one. 

Postback tracking, unlike pixel and JavaScript SDK tracking, does not rely on web browsers to work. Also called server-side tracking or server-to-server tracking, postback tracking uses direct server communication instead. This frees marketers from cookie-based browser restrictions and provides complete control over campaign tracking. Even better? It works cross-channel on desktop web, mobile web, and mobile apps. 

For the short list of pros and cons, plus how postbacks compare to cookie-based tracking, read “Pixels vs. Postbacks: Which Tracking Method Should You Be Using?”

For a more in-depth (and entertaining) look at all of these tracking methods, download our white paper: How to Become a Track Star: Your Guide to Tracking for Performance Marketing Campaigns.

Performance marketers who continue to rely on the dying third-party cookie do so at their own risk. Whether the same fate awaits first-party tracking cookies is unknown, but we don’t suggest waiting around to find out. 

Questions about cookies or other tracking topics? Chat with us to connect with our team of experts.

If you’re a TUNE customer and would like to learn more about JavaScript SDK tracking or postback tracking, please contact your customer success manager.

March 2021 update: Apple has finally pushed iOS version 14.5 after postponing the update in September 2020.

Did you feel that? Apple just shook the foundation of the digital marketing industry — again.

In June, Apple announced at WWDC that the next version of iOS would make the IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) opt-in for all apps. Starting in September, iOS 14 will require every app to get explicit permission from the user before tracking them or accessing their device’s advertising identifier. In other words? Big changes are coming to the mobile ecosystem. Here’s what you need to know.

iOS 14 Will Make App Tracking Opt-In

Apple users who upgrade to iOS 14 later this year will notice a new pop-up when they open an app for the first time. This is the new IDFA opt-in prompt, and it’s the most significant change separating iOS 14 from its predecessors. Here’s what it looks like: 

The new prompt is part of Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency framework, and is required for every app that wants to access a user’s device IDFA to track them. The pop-up will be shown on a per-app basis to users who have not already enabled Limit Ad Tracking (LAT) on their phone. When a user does not give consent to be tracked, the user’s IDFA will appear as all zeros, and the requesting app will not be allowed to track them. 

If that just sounds like an app-specific version of Limit Ad Tracking, it’s because it is. But there is one big difference between this pop-up and the LAT feature: visibility. 

LAT is a device-level setting, but it’s buried deep in the iOS settings menu. It’s hard to find, which is likely the reason only 30% of Apple users have it turned on. The new pop-up, however, will be unmissable — and that’s the point. 

Privacy by Design

Making it easier to see and control what companies are tracking you and why is a definite win for consumer privacy. Given Apple’s steady progress toward greater protections for data security and privacy, this move was a natural next step. 

It’s also a strong signal to marketers of where the rest of the industry is heading. iOS 14 represents the beginning of a paradigm shift for mobile marketing, because where Apple goes, Google and others follow:

• Apple introduced Limit Ad Tracking (LAT) in 2012; Google introduced similar tools in 2013
• Apple introduced Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) in 2017; Mozilla announced similar anti-tracking measures in 2018, followed by Google in 2019
• Apple introduced default third-party cookie blocking in March 2020; Google is following in 2022

It’s possible that Google breaks tradition and chooses not to follow Apple with something similar for Android’s version of the IDFA, the Google Advertising ID (GAID or AAID), but experts are betting otherwise.  

How the Mobile Attribution Industry Is Responding

Mobile attribution companies have chimed in across the ecosystem, and with mixed reactions. Across the board, one thing is clear: everyone wants more clarity from Apple on exactly how mobile marketing will work in iOS 14. 

Here are some of the major industry players and their responses:

Adjust

• An update on Apple’s user privacy changes
• Granular attribution compatible with iOS 14: The Attribution Hash

AppsFlyer

• The future of the App Store economy, in a privacy-centric world

Branch

• How to Prepare Your Mobile App and Attribution Stack for Apple’s iOS 14 Privacy and IDFA Changes

Kochava

• Apple Announcements at WWDC 2020 Challenge Marketers to Tap Alternative Marketing Solutions

Singular

• Singular announces first-to-market SKAdNetwork support to replace the IDFA
• IDFA iOS 14 FAQ: What’s true, what’s fake, and what’s total fantasy

There’s a lot of noise out there about what this really means for mobile marketing. If you assume that only Apple really knows, then it’s time to take a look at SKAdNetwork, Apple’s proposed solution.

SKAdNetwork is an iOS install attribution API originally released in 2018 and updated for iOS 14. According to Apple’s developer site:

“SKAdNetwork allows registered advertising networks to attribute app installations to a particular campaign by receiving a signed signal from Apple. This enables them to verify how many installations occurred from an advertisement and measure which campaigns are most effective while maintaining user privacy. Beginning this fall, advertising networks using SKAdNetwork will have access to Source App information, which identifies the specific app from which an installation occurred. This allows advertising networks who run advertisements on apps they don’t own to identify which app should be credited with initiating the download. SKAdNetwork will also identify re-downloads, which helps advertising networks measure the success of re-engagement campaigns.”

What this means in a nutshell: Apple has decided to facilitate the attribution process at the operating system level to ensure that consumer privacy is protected to its standards. And in doing so, the company is eliminating most of the granularity that mobile marketers have come to expect in their data. (Singular has a good breakdown of it here.)

At least, that’s what people think. Right now, there are still more questions than answers when it comes to iOS 14, SKAdNetwork, and the future of marketing on Apple devices. 

What Mobile Marketers Should Do Now

If you’re an advertiser who uses a mobile measurement partner, you’re in good hands. Across the board, MMPs are aware of the potential and wide-ranging effects iOS 14 will have on mobile marketing, and they’re working to address that new reality ahead of the September 2020 release. Adjust, for example, has already suggested a solution that uses an “attribution hash,” and Singular has announced SKAdNetwork support. However they end up doing it, MMPs are still working to provide well-attributed data.

Right now, the best defense is a strong offense. Make sure your tracking methods and solutions are solid across the board. Work closely with your MMPs, partner management platforms, and other partners to communicate steps you’re taking to prepare. And keep up with the news, both from Apple and experts in the industry. Because until Apple releases more information, this is about all you can do. Time to hurry up and wait. 

To learn more about working with MMPs and different tracking methods, download The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Partner Marketing.