Affiliate Future, a major affiliate network has revealed a patent pending solution to the issue of using cookies to track affiliate commissions.

Consumers are increasingly washing their PC's of cookies, and so affiliates are losing confidence in getting rewarded for their marketing efforts.

This results in short term gains for the merchant, since they don't have to pay an affiliate their %, however in the long term it erodes trust with the merchant and affiliates move on.

Knowing that cookies are not the only way to track referring affiliates, most vendors provide additional tracking technologies such as flash cookies (deleted less often) and ip tracking.

However with mobile ecommerce on the increase, and increased use of dynamic IP's due to broadband penetration, IP tracking is becoming less effective.

Now a major affiliate network, Affiliate Future, has released a patent pending technology to improve affiliate tracking - without the use of cookies. 

"AffiliateFuture, a leading UK and US affiliate network, renowned for its technological innovations has today launched VeraciTag™, a consumer-friendly patent-pending tracking technology. The new solution arrives amid the consumer backlash against cookies and offers reputable online marketers a secure, reliable and privacy-protecting alternative for their affiliate programs.

With UK and US patents pending VeraciTag™ works by storing anonymous tracking information in the web browser of the user’s computer. Operating in this way means the tags cannot be blocked, as cookies can.

As a patent-pending solution AffiliateFuture will control its application and limit data storage to anonymous transactional information; thus protecting consumer privacy.

CEO of AffiliateFuture, Maz Darvish promises, “As we have the patent pending for the technology that underlies this new means of tracking, consumers have a guarantee that their privacy will not be compromised.”

VeraciTag™ heralds a new era for affiliate marketers who are battling against consumers’ increasing tendency to block cookies owing to misuse by less reputable operators, anti virus software and scaremongering media reports.

For merchants VeraciTag™ promises more accurate tracking of affiliate transactions, while affiliates will benefit from an increased number of tracked transactions, and so higher earnings.

VeraciTag™ can be used alongside cookies and flash cookies, but the fate of these two tracking solutions seems sealed and so VeraciTag™ arrives at a crucial time for internet marketers as an alternative to cookies is urgently needed."

Internet marketers have known this for a while, and there are indicators that the big name marketers are catching on to this solution.

I've been talking about this scenario for over a year, and this is one of the key benefits of Viral Sales Generator as explained on the VSG sales letter after the free opt-in page here. 

For more information on the AF announcement read this thread in the abestweb forum. 

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--- (Edited on 3/18/2008 10:50 am [GMT-0500] by Peter) ---