A major concern with affiliate marketing in the modern web is the rise of aggressive adblockers (like uBlock Origin) and privacy-first browsers (like Brave and Safari with ITP).
Why Traditional Trackers Fail
Older affiliate platforms relied on "Third-Party Cookies" or loaded heavy JavaScript from domains known to be trackers (e.g., google-analytics.com). Modern adblockers intercept these requests and block the scripts from executing entirely, resulting in up to 30% of affiliate sales being lost.
How Discover Mac Apps Solves This
We employ several strategies to maximize tracking accuracy:
1. First-Party Cookies
Our track.js script explicitly sets a First-Party cookie on your domain (e.g., .yoursite.com). Safari's Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) aggressively deletes third-party cookies, but it allows first-party cookies to persist (usually for 7 days, which captures the vast majority of impulse SaaS purchases).
2. LocalStorage Fallback
If cookies are disabled or cleared by a script, we also save the affiliate ID in the browser's window.localStorage. When the user returns to the site, our script checks local storage and restores the cookie.
3. Server-to-Server (S2S) API
For absolute, 100% immunity to adblockers, we provide a backend API. Because your own server makes the tracking request in the background, adblockers cannot intercept it. (See the Backend API guide in the Installation section).
[!TIP] If your affiliates complain about "missing sales", it is almost always because the customer used a strict adblocker that blocked the frontend script. Recommend that your high-volume affiliates encourage their audience to disable adblockers, or implement our S2S API on your backend.