How Does Cookie Hijacking Affect The Integrity Of Your Affiliate Marketing Campaigns?

By Author: selinsjesse
Total Articles: 20
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Affiliate marketing is a lucrative way to drive traffic to your website and boost the visibility of products and services. As of 2023, affiliate marketing has a total share of $17 billion. Assuming you are willing to recruit affiliates or already manage a team of affiliate marketers, the odds of getting quality traffic are high.

Affiliate marketing is surging in popularity worldwide because of its straightforward working mechanism. You hire a team of affiliates willing to promote your products and services. By marketing your goods and services, they receive fair commissions each time users click on affiliate links. Besides other promotional techniques, affiliate marketing can help your brand credibility.

The key to success in this performance-based marketing model is the function of cookies. Cookies are small amounts of data stored in a txt file. These txt files download to the devices of your users whenever they visit your website. The primary function of cookies is to offer an optimal user experience to your customers and website visitors.

While cookies are incredibly useful, there is a strategy that’s ...
... not so great. Known as cookie hijacking, it can affect your affiliate marketing campaign's bottom line and profit threat actors. Given how the cookie hijacking has increased, it pays to know how it works.

Cookie Hijacking – The Primary Vulnerability of Affiliate Marketing
Cookie hijacking, also known as session hijacking, happens when malicious affiliates take over the user’s session. When users visit your website, the server assigns a temporary cookie to the user’s browser. The main reason for assigning this cookie is to let the remote server authenticate the user’s login attempt.

To execute cookie hijacking, the threat actor is fully aware of the user’s session ID. They know about the user’s session ID by stealing the session cookie. In other cases, nefarious affiliates trick your customers into clicking malicious links with a prepared session ID. In session hijacking, the server cannot differentiate between the threat actor’s connection and the user’s session.

The Achilles’ Hill of Affiliate Marketing – Session Hijacking
The success of affiliate marketing hinges on trust between your company and its legitimate affiliates. But things can become take an odd turn with session hijacking. In cookie hijacking, the malicious affiliates steal tracking cookies that they didn’t earn rightfully. Besides affecting your brand’s reputation and credibility, they also steal the commissions of the real affiliates.

The nefarious affiliates intercept the tracking cookies during the user’s journey on your website. Session hijacking is also an illicit way to seize the buying journey of your customers. After taking over the tracking cookie, the threat actors can also replace their affiliate’s information with their own. This makes it difficult for your marketing team to attribute fair commissions to legitimate affiliates. They end up paying to the nefarious affiliates.

Cookie hijacking is the Achilles’ Hill of affiliate marketing as it erodes trust. The affiliates who once promoted your products with zeal can get disheartened by unfair payouts. Deploying session hijacking prevention and monitoring tactics is an excellent way to guard your affiliate program’s integrity.

Signs Indicating the Hijacking of Affiliate Cookies
Cookie hijacking can assume dangerous propositions because it is difficult to spot. Victims of cookie hijacking opine that it cannot be detected when it happens during a live session. You will only be a mute spectator when session hijacking wreaks havoc. Marketing teams can assess the damage only after the attack.

However, there are a few signs that indicate the seizure of affiliate cookies. One of the common signs of cookie hijacking is how the web page functions. If it loads erratically and becomes unresponsive without any reason, session hijacking is the main culprit. The page shutting down can be an indication that there are issues with the tracking cookies.
In most companies, the affiliate partners offer transparent reports when individual sales occur. If there is a mismatch between these reports and the commission report, nefarious affiliates are stealing your commissions.

Why is Cookie Hijacking a Menace in Affiliate Marketing?
Cookie hijacking is a menace in the affiliate marketing ecosystem. The most glaring reason for cookie stuffing being a menace is its ability to create distrust. When the legitimate affiliates of your company don’t receive their due payments, they will opt out of the campaign.

Session hijacking can also cause a loss of revenue. It is common for companies to invest in affiliate marketing campaigns, hoping for a higher ROI. But, affiliate fraud like cookie hijacking can cause extreme loss of revenue. Legal complications can occur when threat actors target your affiliate campaigns with cookie hijacking.

Secure Your Affiliate Campaigns with VPT's Compliance Monitoring Tools
VPT (Virus Positive Technologies) is emerging as the go-to option for companies who want to secure their affiliate campaigns. VPT can help you with customer journey hijacking and recovering ad revenue. You can now protect your brand’s online reputation with VPT's monitoring tools.