As many adult affiliates decry declining conversion ratios and contemplate causes such as perceived fraud by sponsors, billing company instability, piracy and tube sites, “cookie stuffing” and various other reasons, a further factor needs to be considered — enhanced “porn mode” features in modern web browsers that protect privacy and ease the minds of online consumers by boosting safety and security — but at a cost to affiliates in terms of lost sales commissions.
For example, Mozilla’s recently updated Firefox 20 web browser offers a variety of enhancements, such as an improved “porn mode” that disables the software’s ability to record details about a user’s surfing session — including cookies, history and temporary data files that betray the surfer’s tracks — but which also track adult affiliate referrals.
Because most adult affiliate programs rely on tracking cookies in order to properly credit referrals, fewer cookies naturally means fewer credits for legitimate referrals.
Available for Linux, Mac and Windows, Firefox 20 allows its users to enjoy private surfing sessions using a new window (or tab in the Android version) alongside windows and tabs displaying standard browsing sessions. This capability will doubtless be seen in dual window sessions, where a “face” screen and “naughty” window coexist side by side — one window providing cover for the other in case of an unplanned interruption.
As a side note, the new version of Firefox supports getUserMedia, allowing its users to record directly from a device’s camera or microphone from within the web browser for peer-to-peer file-sharing, full video chat and voice calling without troublesome plug-ins; providing a platform that is sure to be popular with social media users and others, such as live adult webcam fans.
Other browsers offer similar privacy features, such as Google Chrome’s “Incognito” or Microsoft Internet Explorer’s “InPrivate” surfing modes.
According to Google, for times when you want to browse in stealth mode, Chrome’s incognito browsing mode allows users to open web pages and downloaded files without recording those actions in browsing and download histories. All new cookies are deleted after you close all incognito windows, but changes made to Google Chrome bookmarks and general settings while in incognito mode are always saved.
Microsoft says that Internet Explorer’s “InPrivate” mode prevents anyone else who might be using your computer from seeing where you visited and what you looked at on the web, by opening a new window for protected browsing.
Because most adult affiliate programs rely on tracking cookies in order to properly credit referrals, fewer cookies naturally means fewer credits for legitimate referrals.
The explanation doesn’t make up for those declining conversion ratios, which are due in part not to the ratios actually dropping but due to this cookie issue and is just one more challenge being faced by adult affiliates.
Of course, some companies track affiliate sales by other means, which may recapture otherwise lost sales — while providing a more permanent record of referrals that prevent you from receiving a payout based on your re-referring a previous prospect, even years after the initial referral and whether the prospect bought in at that time or not; so be sure to read the sponsor’s fine print and understand how cookies and cookie-less tracking will affect your payouts and conversion ratios in this swiftly changing arena.
