Affiliate S2S tracking is postback conversion plumbing: store a click ID, receive the server message, match the join key. Pixel vs postback, then verify one real click before you scale.
Policy promises won’t stop PPC from intercepting affiliate credit. Learn to audit search term reports, SubID exports, and pixel data for real attribution collisions—before budget decisions that pretend overlap doesn’t exist.
A consent banner is a measurement tax that becomes a commission tax when tracking tags fail. Learn to diagnose the loss and close the gap between network payouts and analytics.
Flat clicks with falling commissions are usually a named attribution break. Diagnose wrong URLs, cookies and ITP, rot, redirects, signup walls, SubID filters, and false-green postbacks.
After a clicks-vs-commissions mismatch, map every redirect hop, prove your affiliate ID survived, and separate merchant clawbacks from mid-chain tracking breaks.
Signup-wall handoff break: domain scope, session renew on auth, param strip, email/OTP and social-login variants. Diagnose with merchant new-customer flags and a DevTools hop walk.
