Duplication of affiliate / CPA payments

hi, Paul, how's life?

Here's a neat way of doing it:

Problem

We want to know, for every order, which marketing channels have touched that order. We don't, however, want to pay out to 2 or more marketing providers for their part in that sale - we only want to pay once (if at all).

Solution

We use our own cookie to store details of every marketing channel a customer has come through prior to purchase. At the actual point of purchase, we can therefore attribute what they've touched HOWEVER, we only display the conversion code of ONE CPA partner.

So, let's say your route to purchase is:

• Day 1: visit the site through a Google ad (CPC)
• Day 2: visit the same site through a price comparison site (in this case, a CPA deal)
• Day 3: visit again through another comparison site (a CPC deal)
• Day 4: return through an email campaign (in-house)
• Day 5: return through an affiliate (CPA)

The system would record the fact that that order was touched by each of those different campaigns. It would also record that 'first click' was the google ad & 'last click' was the affiliate.

The internal system would record the following against the order:

• First Click: CPC
• Last Click: Affiliate
• All channels touched: google CPC, price comparison (CPA), price comparison (CPC), email, affiliate (CPA)

But would only show conversion for your choice of:

• All CPC + last-click CPA
• All CPC + first-clicked CPA
• last click only
• first click only

Make any sense?

daniel