Originally printed on Mar. 24, 2015, this text has been up to date to incorporate an explainer video that covers a cookie-stuffing scheme uncovered by cybersecurity agency Confiant in January 2023.
If there’s cash altering palms on-line fraudsters are going to attempt to discover a solution to skim a share from the transaction. Fraud is a well-documented pox on digital promoting, nevertheless it’s additionally a difficulty for publishers and entrepreneurs working collectively on online marketing offers, too. One of the extra tried-and-true methods is cookie stuffing. Let us clarify.
First: clarify what a cookie is?
A cookie is a tiny little bit of code that a web site drops in a person’s browser. Sites use cookies to retailer person knowledge reminiscent of login particulars, purchasing carts, or person preferences. Various promoting corporations additionally use “tracking” cookies to gather knowledge and preserve tabs on individuals’s looking historical past, which they use to serve focused adverts. It’s additionally utilized by publishers to inform retailers person when customers click on considered one of their online marketing hyperlinks
Affiliate advertising and marketing?
There’s a variety of jargon right here. Affiliate advertising and marketing is a course of by which one enterprise pays one other for both bringing in clicks or, for retailers, gross sales on their websites. So if writer X sends some guests to Amazon to purchase toothpaste, writer X will get a small share of these gross sales, normally pennies on the greenback.
So WTF is cookie stuffing?
With cookie stuffing, whereas writer X sends guests to Amazon, a separate writer really will get credit score — and therefore cash — for the sale. They do that by dropping a number of cookies after somebody views a web page or clicks on a single hyperlink. The hope is that dropping a number of cookies will increase the possibility that the particular person will go on to go to and purchase from one of many commerce websites in query.
“Cookie stuffing creates wrongful attribution,” stated Forensiq CEO David Sendroff. “It’s essentially stealing the credit for someone else’s attribution.” He stated surreptitiously dropped cookies usually change these from respectable publishers.
Where do these faux cookies come from?
The faux cookies come from a wide range of sources — together with pop-ups, scripts, toolbars and pictures embedded in message boards. Cookie stuffing is additionally widespread on on-line coupon websites, which fraudsters makes use of to drop handfuls affiliate cookies.
Why does it matter?
It issues as a result of many extra publishers are moving into affiliate linking. Gawker, for instance, compiles a protracted listing of affiliate hyperlink every days by way of its Kinja Deals sequence, and takes a reduce every time readers make a purchase order. More affiliate linking fraud means much less income for respectable publishers.
It looks like a small drawback.
It isn’t. Marketer Shawn Hogan helped rip-off eBay out of $28 million in on-line advertising and marketing charges from eBay earlier than the corporate labored with the FBI to catch him in a sting operation. Hogan received sentenced to five months in jail, three years probation, and a $25,000 positive.
So why hasn’t cookie stuffing been stamped out?
“With cookie stuffing, you’re committing a crime against another affiliate or the advertisers who is paying commissions on sales that would have happened anyway,” Sendroff stated. “It’s not as eye-opening and it’s harder to catch because the advertiser has still made money.”
Photo: Rajiv Patel/Flickr
…. to be continued
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