Yes I know I keep publishing cookie studies and YES I am obsessed with cookies. They are the foundation of tracking in our industry and I KNOW affiliates are missing out on lots of sales due to cookie issues. The other studies were about users deleting cookies. This is one that I am more concerned about. All those damn anti-spyware apps that target cookies as bad, just so they can show users a longer list of “threats” than the other anti-spyware programs did.

EDITED TO ADD:
No I am NOT saying the “sky is falling on affiliate marketing.” What I am saying is that cookies are being deleted various ways in growing numbers. Little did we know when some of us were actively fighting against adware and spyware that some of our efforts would backfire as the media and anti-spyware companies would label our precious cookies as spyware. We need to either correct the bad cookie PR in the consumers mind OR come up with a back-up or alternative method of tracking.

“…of the 70 percent of consumers who use some form of anti-spyware software, 79.5 percent say they run the software daily or weekly, 57.6 percent delete every item pointed out by the software, and 48.3 percent delete cookies through the software. That’s roughly 27 percent of online consumers clearing their cookies weekly through anti-spyware software alone, according to a Horizon press release. It quotes Lee Smith, CEO of Insight Express: “Although we have learned that there is a large discrepancy between what consumers claim and what they actually do, the numbers cannot be ignored.”

Here is the rest of the article from MarketingVOX: Study: 27 Percent Weekly Clearing Cookies