Need Advice: High-Quality Leads Sent, No Commissions Recorded Except for Test Transactions

[jFrost]

Hi everyone,

I run a luxury fashion search app, and since the start of the year, I’ve sent a couple of thousand high-quality leads to different retailers through two affiliate networks (Rakuten and CJ). Despite this, I’ve seen zero commissions recorded from real users.

I suspected a tracking issue and ran two separate test purchases from different IPs, environments, and devices (iOS 17, to match my users) after their Safari history was cleared. Both of these test transactions were successfully recorded. This leaves me wondering why user-generated sales aren’t being tracked.

Has anyone else experienced similar situations where only test transactions are recorded but not actual user purchases? Could this be related to issues like attribution, retargeting, privacy settings (iOS 17), or something else I haven’t considered? I’d appreciate any insights or suggestions on what to investigate next!

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[vengagebay]

Hi there,

It sounds like a frustrating situation! Since your test transactions are working but user purchases aren’t, I’d suggest looking into privacy settings, especially with iOS 17. Safari’s enhanced privacy features (like Intelligent Tracking Prevention) could be interfering with tracking, especially if users are blocking cookies or using private browsing. It might also be worth checking if there’s any conflict with attribution windows or retargeting settings in your affiliate networks.

Hope this helps and you get it sorted soon!

 

[Graybeard]

especially if users are blocking cookies or using private browsing

Anyone (networks or sellers) utilizing tracking cookies today is shaving by omission, no mia culpa (smirk ... smirk ...).

Avoid them.

 

[jFrost]

Hi guys and thanks for the quick response!!

Safari’s enhanced privacy features (like Intelligent Tracking Prevention) could be interfering with tracking, especially if users are blocking cookies or using private browsing.

I'm not sure this is the issue in our case. In our tests, we used real peoples' devices running the latest iOS 17 with their default privacy settings, after clearing Safari history, and the purchases were still registered.

Moreover, after the first test, I started thinking that someone might be playing games with us, so I waited for a week to run the second test—but alas, the test passed as well.

It might also be worth checking if there’s any conflict with attribution windows or retargeting settings in your affiliate networks.

How can we check that?

If you have any other ideas, please don’t hesitate to throw them our way—we need all the help we can get!

Thanks a lot for all the help!!