Understanding how Awin tracks sales and allocates commissions is crucial to ensuring you receive accurate payments for any purchases made through your affiliate links.
Publisher identification, attribution, and commission allocation
Publisher ID allocation: When you join Awin as a Publisher, you receive a unique Publisher ID (PID), such as 999999. This PID is embedded into the tracking URLs you use to promote the advertiser's products and services. To find your Publisher ID, see Where can I find my Publisher ID?
Example tracking link:
https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=000000&awinaffid=99999
To learn more about what Awin affiliate links look like, see What does an affiliate link look like?
Sales tracking process
Here's an overview of the publisher journey from click to commission:
- Visitor consent: When visitors land on your website, they must select an option from your consent form or cookie banner. When they give consent, tracking cookies are set and begin tracking their activity as they browse your site. This tracking can include page views, clicks, and time measurements. If the user declines, no tracking cookies are set except for 'strictly necessary' or essential cookies.
For more information on cookie consent, see Cookie Consent - Publisher FAQs.
- Affiliate link click: When a visitor clicks your affiliate link, several action happens to ensure the click is tracked and attributed correctly, depending on whether the advertiser uses first-party or third-party cookies:
- First-party cookie tracking: The affiliate link redirects the user through the advertiser's domain, which sets a first-party cookie containing information such as the affiliate ID, timestamp, and tracking code.
- Third-party cookie tracking: The affiliate link redirects the user through a third-party/affiliate network domain, which sets a third-party cookie containing information such as the Affiliate ID, timestamp, and tracking code.
Note: Due to increasingly stringent privacy regulations, many browsers are blocking third-party cookies. Awin advertisers use first-party cookies.
To learn more about cookies, see Cookie Tracking – Publisher FAQs.
- Advertiser consent: The advertiser's website presents another consent form or cookie banner. If the visitor accepts, additional cookies are set. If they don't accept, no additional tracking cookies besides strictly necessary cookies are set.
- User interaction: Cookies track the visitor's behaviour on the advertiser's site based on the consent preferences set on arrival. This includes page and product views, and cart activity where applicable.
- Sale tracking: When the user completes a purchase, they land on the order confirmation page. Here, a tracking pixel or script reads the cookie and captures details about the sale, including the order value, product information, and publisher ID. The tracking tool then sends these details to the advertiser's and the affiliate network's servers. To learn more, see: What tracking solutions does Awin offer to accurately track sales?
- Commission and reporting: Awin compiles sales data and provides reports to the advertiser and publisher. The publisher is then credited with a commission for the referred sale. For more information on how to access reports in the Awin platform, see Where do I find reports?To learn more about commission rates, see How can I view programmes' commission rates?
