Affiliate marketing is undergoing a major shift. Privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA, combined with the ongoing phase-out of third-party cookies, are making traditional tracking methods obsolete.
Brands that once relied on last-click attribution and cookie-based tracking are now struggling to understand how their customers interact with their campaigns and which affiliate partners are driving real value.
The recent Paypal / Honey scandal that continues to ensue has highlighted this and brought the entire industry’s attention to measurement and attribution in minute detail. This change is more than just a technical hurdle – it’s a wake-up call for brands to rethink how they measure success and safeguard their marketing investments. Failing to adapt means lost revenue, wasted marketing spend, and exposure to fraudulent activities like attribution hijacking.
To stay competitive, affiliate marketers must adopt smarter, privacy-compliant solutions that provide accurate data and actionable insights.
Let’s explore how affiliate marketing is changing, the challenges brands now face, and how Konnecto helps businesses overcome these obstacles with the data modelling and insights it can produce.
The Breakdown of Traditional Tracking
For years, affiliate marketing operated on systems built around third-party cookies and last-click attribution. These tools made it relatively easy for brands to track customer behaviour, credit partners for conversions, and optimise campaigns. But this approach is no longer viable.
Major browsers like Safari and Firefox have already blocked third-party cookies, and Google is following suit. Additionally, regulations like GDPR in Europe and CCPA in California have made data privacy a top priority, limiting how companies can collect and use personal data.
A major issue that’s come to light is attribution hijacking – where bad actors manipulate tracking systems to claim commissions for sales they didn’t legitimately influence. This kind of misleading advertising and affiliate tracking mis-information drains marketing budgets and misleads brands into thinking certain partners are high performers.
It also plays an impact on consumer protection and advertising standards which is what the civil suits around Paypal Honey are now addressing in the US in particular. Without reliable tracking, brands lose sight of their customers’ journeys, making it nearly impossible to measure what’s working and what isn’t.
The Challenges Affiliate Marketers Are Facing
1. Loss of Visibility on Attribution of Sales Across Channels
As customers move between devices and platforms, tracking their full search and customer journey becomes harder without third-party cookies. Brands are left with fragmented data, making it difficult to see which affiliates are genuinely contributing to their customer conversions.
2. Proving Affiliate Value
Affiliate marketing has always required proof of performance. Now, without granular data, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to measure how much value each partner is driving. This lack of clarity makes it tough to scale programmes effectively or justify affiliate payouts.
3. Attribution Fraud and Hijacking
Attribution hijacking is costing brands more than they realise. Fraudulent partners manipulate tracking to steal credit for sales, often through shady tactics like cookie stuffing or browser extensions. This inflates affiliate performance metrics and drains marketing budgets.
4. Overlapping and Expensive Tools
To patch these gaps, many brands are using multiple tools for tracking, attribution, fraud prevention, and competitive analysis. This creates complexity, inconsistent data, and high operational costs.
Smarter Tracking Alternatives are available
The challenges facing affiliate marketing are serious, but they’re not unsolvable. New tracking solutions are emerging that offer better accuracy, stronger security, and full compliance with privacy laws. The problem is adoption and implementation to transfer from old methods to new have been slow as there is no governing body responsible for ensuring global best practices.
Server-to-Server (S2S) Tracking
S2S tracking bypasses browsers entirely. Instead of relying on cookies, it passes data directly between servers, reducing the risk of fraud and improving accuracy. Fraudulent partners can’t manipulate server data as easily, making this method much more secure.
Platforms like AWIN, are already encouraging brands to switch to S2S tracking, citing its effectiveness in preventing fraud and delivering cleaner data to base your strategic decisions on.
First-Party Data Strategies
Relying on first-party data collected directly from customers allows brands to stay compliant while gaining better insights. This approach empowers brands to personalise marketing strategies and strengthen customer relationships without relying on third-party tracking tools.
Probabilistic Tracking and Media Mix Modelling (MMM)
When direct tracking isn’t possible, probabilistic tracking steps in by analysing aggregated data to predict customer behaviour. Many brands are also turning to Media Mix Modelling (MMM) to measure how different marketing channels contribute to conversions. This method doesn’t rely on cookies but still provides useful data for performance measurement.
How Konnecto Solves These Challenges
Konnecto has developed a platform that eliminates the need for multiple tools by providing everything brands need to manage and optimize affiliate programmes in one place.
- Protecting Against Attribution Hijacking: Konnecto actively detects attribution hijacking by monitoring suspicious affiliate activity. Brands can easily see which partners are inflating performance metrics and draining budgets. This means only genuine, high-performing affiliates get rewarded.
- Full Customer Journey Visibility: Konnecto maps the entire customer journey, revealing where customers are being influenced and where sales are being lost. This gives brands the clarity needed to invest in the right partners and channels.
- Competitor Analysis and Partner Discovery: Konnecto doesn’t just focus on your brand’s data – it also shows how competitors are influencing your audience. This insight helps brands discover new, high-performing affiliate partners that might have been missed with traditional tracking tools.
Real Results
At the beginning of this year, Konnecto shared figures that highlighted their platform had identified over $1m in fraudulent affiliate activity.
That included $53k from a single brand who hadn’t been able to identify the risk while using other tools in the space and another brand that identified $14k of fraud within 24 hours of signing up to the platform.
The Future of Affiliate Tracking
The era of third-party cookies is ending, and privacy regulations are only going to become stricter. Brands that continue relying on outdated tracking methods are putting their growth at risk.
The future belongs to brands that invest in privacy-compliant, accurate tracking tools that provide real-time, actionable data. Solutions like Konnecto help brands cut through the noise, eliminate fraud, and discover new opportunities for growth.
Affiliate marketers need to act now. Waiting too long to update your tracking methods could mean more wasted spend, missed opportunities, and vulnerability to fraud
Konnecto is ready to help you navigate this new world. Our all-in-one platform protects your programme from fraud, reveals which partners are truly driving results, and helps you uncover new ways to grow.
Ready to future-proof your affiliate marketing?
Find out more about how Konnecto can help you protect your budget, discover better partnerships, and drive real growth in 2025 and beyond by visiting their website.
