Google Chrome 80: Could it affect your affiliate campaigns?

Just when you thought the rough and tumble of January had come to a close, everyone’s (or at least 70% of everyone’s) favourite internet browser has come along with one more thing for you to think about as you plan your next batch of affiliate campaigns.

The latest Google Chrome update, formally known as Google Chrome 80, is set to launch on Tuesday 4th February, with the main aim of enhancing browsing speeds, but the issue of user data security continues to be a perpetual battle.

In an attempt to overcome this, as of 4th February, Google Chrome will suppress cookies from unsecured domains (HTTP without the S at the end) as well as cookies from domains that are different to the web page domain. This is potentially problematic if the domain used by tracking links and conversion and event pixels is not the same as the webpage the user is browsing. If you’re an affiliate with Monetise, you will have noticed our tracking links carry the “monetisetrk” tracking domain, which means under  the new Chrome update, the cookie information passed from that domain would be lost if the user was to continue on to the offer’s landing page – IF we work on a cookie-based tracking setup with the advertiser.

Fortunately, the Monetise team have been hard at work with our advertisers to ensure that all of our offers are hosted on secure domains, and any remaining cookie-based offers have been converted to postback tracking set ups. This means none of our offers will be reliant on user information being stored on an individual’s device, with the communication of said information instead being transferred securely between Monetise and the advertisers. Leads are tracked between the two parties via the communicating of a unique transaction value that is pinged from our sever to the client’s, and then fired back to us, which allows for the conversion to be tracked through each individual system in a secure fashion, before being stored in our tracking system, CAKE.

The Monetise team has done everything it can to mitigate the potential downtime that could come as a result of lost cookie data, but we recommend that publishers have conversations with any direct relationships they have outside of the Monetise network to ensure their campaigns run as seamlessly as possible.

Is your affiliate site SSL-ready? Find out more about the value of a secure display traffic source.