At the recent PI LIVE in London, the Moonpull team heard the question "why should advertisers care about tracking" many times. It's also a refrain we hear all too often from publishers — albeit phrased differently — as why would an advertiser fix tracking if they're getting free sales?
A Programme's Future Depends on Caring About Tracking
This is the best reason alone. And, it's not just its long term future, but it's near-term future too.
At PI LIVE, Adam Ross from Awin highlighted the need to care about tracking by explaining Awin's "Conversion Protection Initiative", starting his presentation with "What I'm here to tell you today, is that the numbers are likely under reported anywhere between 10 and 50%".
There's No Such Thing as Free Sales
There is no such thing as free sales in the long term from publishers. It is true there has been a prolonged period where many publishers have promoted advertisers for too long after an issue has been identified. This is changing, with the change potentially accelerating.
Moonpull talks to many publishers and networks, with perhaps 40% of UK affiliate revenue currently being monitored by Moonpull's publisher clients.
Publishers Are Optimising Revenue
They're prepared to make mistakes to make more good decisions than bad ones. The days of trying to maximise individual programs in isolation has gone. Publishers are more prepared than ever to downplay advertisers with lower EPCs in favour of those with higher EPCs.
Publishers Are Building Towards Programmatic Selection
This is taking the optimisation to the next level. As Adam explained "increasingly we're going to see more and more publishers making database decisions on which brands to promote".
Publishers Are Scorecarding Advertisers
Publishers care about more than just tracking — payment and rejection issues are often cited as significant concerns. At a recent Moonpull event, a leading loyalty publisher shared "we are moving to prioritise advertisers that have a clear and sensible strategy for working with us, over those that don't".
User Consent Is a Big Deal
Typically a program with User Consent being required for first party tracking is already suffering losses of 15% (the consent declined proportion on Safari). When Chrome offers users the choice to inhibit the fallback third party tracking this loss could grow to 50%.
The Deprecation Cliff Is Real
Networks love more than one tracking method being in place as it offers redundancy. The "deprecation cliff" highlights the scenario where an advertiser believes they have first party tracking but they don't, and their sales are being third party tracked. This is a significant 43% potential uplift for a publisher, which could have gone unnoticed due to a gradual degradation.
First Party Fixes Can Take Time
The best way to avoid tracking issues is not to let them arise. There may be advertisers for whom ratification of first party matters might take a number of months. Publishers will switch advertisers, and then the program may be starting from scratch.
As Ernie Collings, Senior Product Manager at Partnerize, explains: "Effective first-party affiliate tracking not only requires a solid foundation, but also requires ongoing management. From optimal collection and storage of 1st party data, to understanding consent policies and logic to enabling app tracking, the aspects of first party affiliate tracking are nuanced, requiring ongoing monitoring and testing to ensure the foundation remains sound."
The Benefit of Tracking Diligence
For a major retail client, Scale Digital had made investigations to identify the scenarios causing a decline in tracking. A quick check using Moonpull data helped identify the issue: "Within a week of onboarding with Moonpull, Scale was able to process the links of the top partners via Moonpull and identify the cause of the tracking blockage, thus saving the client a huge migration and disruption during peak."
Real-World Example — Telco Advertiser
Moonpull has seen many examples of programs improve on tracking being fixed. One prominent one is of a telco advertiser which fixed its first party tracking, and saw a 38% uplift in commissions. The resulting improved EPC then provided a further uplift so more sales were resulting with the increase being 60% more sales tracked. Fixing tracking made the program more competitive.
Tracking Is Everyone's Responsibility
**Networks:** Providing a CPA tracking methodology is a central part of running a network. Monitoring and liaising with advertisers on tracking is an inherent part of running a network.
**Publishers:** Running a business requires supplier management — publishers should have their own knowledge on tracking for long-term revenue optimisation and risk management.
**Agencies:** Agencies are the specialists needing to be on top of making sure their clients' programs are successful.
**Advertisers:** Good tracking stops a downward drift in a program's competitiveness, and good tracking management will avoid a "deprecation cliff" event.
Quite simply programs with good tracking have more opportunity to be attractive to publishers and less risk of being unattractive. Natural selection means the attractive ones will win out long term.
If you would like to see more of how Moonpull can benefit your business, we'd love to hear from you. Please get in touch via our [contact page](/contact).