What is cookie filling?
Cookie stuffing is an illegal method of generating affiliate sales. Affiliates using cookie stuffing expect to earn commission on sales they didn’t make.
Marketplaces like ClickBank exist to help merchants promote products. The idea is that an affiliate marketer promotes a product, and in exchange for your spend, time, and effort, the merchant gives you a percentage of the sale. ClickBank does everything possible to protect the affiliate marketer’s effort. It is ClickBank’s policy that if a consumer visits a marketing affiliate’s website and leaves, the affiliate will continue to receive credit for the sale if the consumer repurchases the product within 60 days. The affiliate will earn credit if the consumer makes the purchase within 60 days of initial contact. This protects the member as many consumers do not make a purchase on the first visit.
ClickBank has to track the consumer for 60 days to enforce this policy. It is done through a cookie. A cookie is a piece of information stored on a consumer’s computer. The cookie is written to the consumer’s computer when the affiliate website is browsed and the “skip link” is clicked. The cookie remains on the consumer’s computer for 60 days. If the consumer returns and purchases the product, the cookie is read and the original affiliate receives credit for the sale.
The presence of the cookie is what has led to cookie stuffing. The premise is to write ClickBank cookies on a visitor’s computer without the visitor’s knowledge. If that visitor buys a product within 60 days, the affiliate will get credit for the sale.
For example, imagine a blog comment or forum post where an affiliate has managed to place an image tag that points to your jump link. The affiliate wants these image tags to be on pages with high traffic. Every visitor who views that page will see a broken image tag. Behind the scenes, the ClickBank cookie with the affiliate code has just been written to the visitor’s computer. Any high traffic website will do. The more people view the page, the more cookies will be written. If any of these visitors purchase the product within 60 days, the affiliate will get credit for the sale.
The affiliate marketer simply has to spam as many websites as possible with their image tag (or javascript popup or iframe tag). The more people end up with your cookie, the more sales you’ll get credit for.
All affiliate programs are vulnerable to this type of fraud. ClickBank and other marketplaces will ban affiliates for this practice. However, it may take some time before the fraud is noticed. Also, cookie fillers find better ways to hide their tracks.
