Commission Junction

Commission Junction recently conducted research on private browsing features, specifically Microsoft’s InPrivate Browsing for Internet Explorer 8, and how they might impact affiliate click tracking.

The article below, by Craig Battles, Senior Product Manager at CJ, should help affiliate marketers put any concerns to rest.

Like many of us in the affiliate marketing industry, we at Commission Junction were wondering about the impact of the InPrivate Browsing feature in the newest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, currently in beta release. InPrivate Browsing will prevent your browser from retaining your browsing history, temporary Internet files, form data, usernames, passwords and — of most concern to advertisers with affiliate programs — cookies. We recently looked into the issue on behalf of our advertiser and publisher clients, which included speaking with representatives at Microsoft.

Microsoft is not the first to introduce this feature nor is it the only one: Apple pioneered the idea of private browsing three years ago with the Safari browser, Google’s new Chrome browser features an “Incognito” mode for private browsing, and Mozilla announced that the next version of its popular Firefox browser will also include a new private browsing feature.

You can already clear your browser cache with a mouse click in earlier versions of Internet Explorer, but it’s an all-or-nothing action. The benefit of InPrivate Browsing is that it allows you to temporarily suspend the automatic caching functions so that you leave no trace of your visits to sites you choose to keep private while leaving the rest of your browsing history intact.

The good news for advertisers is that private browsing is not the default setting for any of these browsers (the feature must be enabled by the user) and it does not block or delete cookies. Once you select InPrivate Browsing, Internet Explorer 8 will launch a new browser session and copy all existing cookie information into memory. Any new cookies acquired during the browsing session will not be blocked, but they also will not be stored when the session ends.

Situations in which you may choose to use InPrivate Browsing could include when you’re using someone else’s computer and don’t want that person to see your browsing history, when you want to buy a gift for a family member on a shared computer without ruining the surprise, when you’re at an Internet kiosk and don’t want the next person to know which Web site you visited, and when you’re tempted to look at things that could get you fired or kicked out of the house.

So how does private browsing affect Commission Junction’s capability to track consumers’ purchases via affiliate links? Not that much. Even after initiating InPrivate Browsing — as long as they have cookies enabled in their browsers — consumers can use an affiliate link to go to your site and, if they complete their transactions during the same session, the transactions will be tracked by Commission Junction. Even if the consumer clicks an affiliate link before beginning the InPrivate Browsing session, the transaction will still be tracked. However, if a consumer clicks an affiliate link during an InPrivate Browsing session and then ends the session before making a purchase, then any purchase that consumer makes during a return visit to your Web site without going directly through an affiliate link will not be tracked. In all likelihood, most consumers who are interested in using private browsing for making purchases (the surprise gift purchase, for example) will visit your site and make a purchase during the same session.

InPrivate Browsing will also prevent some cookies and other content from being placed by third-party Web sites. According to Microsoft, the sites that will get blocked will be determined based on the frequency that these sites attempt to place cookies. Commission Junction cookies are “first party” rather than “third party” because they are set when a consumer clicks an affiliate link that points the browser to Commission Junction domains whereupon the cookies are set and the browser is redirected to an advertiser’s site.

According to Microsoft: “Users are often not aware that some content, images, ads and analytics are being provided from third party websites or that these websites have the ability to potentially track their behavior across multiple websites,” further adding, “Because InPrivate Blocking is designed to watch for and block only third-party content that appears with a high frequency across sites you visit, no content is blocked until such levels are detected, nor is any such content blocked which is served directly by the site you are visiting.”

Microsoft confirmed during conversations with Commission Junction and ValueClick that its implementation of InPrivate Blocking will identify and block content from specific URLs rather than domains that appear across multiple Web sites. This should not pose a problem for Commission Junction’s publishers because each publisher will use a unique URL including his or her own Web site ID number. The risk of having links or tracking pixels blocked by Microsoft’s InPrivate Browsing is low for Commission Junction because it would be unlikely that a consumer would encounter tracking pixels with the “high frequency” that would be required to trigger such blocking.

In summary, InPrivate Browsing and other private browsing features will not automatically block all cookies and will continue to work with most solutions, like Commission Junction, that track cookies. And of the small minority of consumers who may choose to enable the private browsing feature before they shop, the majority will complete their transactions during the same session, which will allow the tracking of purchases through affiliate links.