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Many affiliate marketers seem to be scared of this Incognito mode that is in Chrome.
Well, to be honest, some Affiliate marketers should be... But I am not. And I am going to tell you why I think most of you should not be scared too.
First let's think about how affiliate sales almost always work:
-> Person searches for product or service -> They see and click your advertisement -> They see your landing page -> A. They close your page. or B. They click your affiliate link -> They either sign up or they don't.
This is how MOST affiliate programs are promoted. I'd be willing to bet that 80% or more of the affiliate programs that are promoted, most people never close their browser in between one of those processes unless they simply did not find what they were looking for.
Incognito mode only deletes cookies and such after you close the browser... What's even more important to note is that incognito mode is something MOST users won't use for common browsing, research, and purchasing. I'd say this cartoon below by my good friend Dave at ProspectMX.com sums up what I think 90%+ of incognito users will be doing.
(click to see full size)
So all that to say... there are a few things that might suffer a TAD bit.
First, those who stuff cookies. Cookie stuffing is a black hat method that is reserved for the big boys only. Nicky Cakes has a pretty interesting read about the owner of Digitalpoint forums being sued by ebay for cookie stuffing.
Since Incognito mode removes cookies... a few users won't have their cookies stuffed. Honestly, The ONLY people I know who would use Incognito mode while visiting Digitalpoint is 90% of the people from Wickedfire. 
Otherwise, consider your cookies safely stuffed.
Next, adult offers in general. Thankfully I'm no where near this industry (nor will I ever be). Of all the things that Incognito mode will affect most, it would be this industry. (See cartoon above).
Lastly, (and this might hit home with more people), The Ebay affiliate program. I think this one might take a bit of a hit because many users rely on those 7 days of cookie life to get commission. I assume most people won't go shopping for things in incognito mode but that doesn't mean there wont be some.
For those who are curious, the Ebay affiliate program can be found over at the PepperJam Network.
Uhh…you realize that probably 95% of affiliate offers rely entirely on cookies to track conversions, right? Not just ebay
Yea but I highly doubt people will use incognito mode on a regular basis for things such as…
When someone searching for green tea comes to the landing page, 95% of the time, they fill out the offer right then and there, so even if they are in incognito, the offer still gets credited to me.
Few of the affiliate programs promoted in the ways we promote them rely on the cookie period beyond the time someone closes their browser.
Well since google intends to totally own the net, we IM marketers need to just keep evolving.
Too bad for the cookie problem, many affiliate products use long term cookies for future sales and all this is wipped off now.
While this isn’t the end of the world by any means, it will def have an impact on affiliate marketing if many people start using this feature in Chrome and/or IE8. There are tons of niches (such as big ticket items) where the user is more often then not researching the product first and rarely buys at that moment. Affiliates promoting many of these things will take a serious hit if this becomes very popular (not sure it will).
The scarier part of Chrome is if it becomes very popular then Google will have that much more data they can use against affiliates. I can see slaps coming down from data Chrome gathers at some point down the road.
Hi Jonathan,
I agree and hope most people won’t use incognito on a regular basis.
However cookies ARE needed to track a large majority of affiliate sales. I think you mainly work in the CPA space with free offers and leads. In those cases people usually follow through on the spot because it’s free and there is no real buying decision to be made.
But with regular retail affiliate programs like you find on CJ, Linkshare and GAN – which is what the bigger majority of affiliates promote – cookies are a definite issue. People often shop and compare, for days or even weeks.
The higher ticket the item and the more complicated the product the longer the buy cycle tends to be. For instance computers and electronics can take a long time for people to finally make a purchase decision and buy.
Lately I’ve been buying some nutritional supplements and I’ll research for a few nights before I decide which type, brand and merchant I’m going to buy from.
My 2 cents, from the retail side of the industry.
Linda Buquet
Wayne, great minds think alike. Guess we were posting at the same time.
Linda & Wayne: Both great points.
Touche’
I’m sure that there will be a way figured out to override this mode. Have faith in the programmers and hackers.
Hey man…
Two things…
1) THANKS for talking about our comic! Adam Perry is actually the cartoonist and I just wanted to make sure he’s given some cred.
2) Our company continues to do affiliate marketing, but we’re doing it in many cases without involving a network for reasons similar to those that Wayne and Linda talk about.
I would encourage high volume affiliate marketers to contact advertisers directly and set up data feeds. If you’re going to do enough volume, they will talk to you and many have systems set up already. By doing this, you KNOW for a FACT that you’re being credited for the leads you generate because they are in your database as well.
Now, I understand this doesn’t apply for many of the retail type programs… but someone will figure it out. They always do.
If incognito mode continues to gain in popularity, it will have a dramatic impact on the affiliate marketing world. But it’s not like anything else, there are always things that change the game. The strong will find new ways to play with the new rules and the weak will just sit on the sidelines and whine.