Are You Familiar with Facebook Atlas?

Since joining Wealthy Affiliate, even before actually, I have unsubscribed from quite a few self-proclaimed IM gurus. It’s something that nearly all people new to internet marketing go through before catching on that success is not as quick and easy as a lot of people claim and charge a lot of money to show their process.

However, along the way, I’ve also come across many sources of very good informational content. One of the websites that I’ve subscribed to is Mark Ling’s Affiliorama: http://www.affilorama.com

He sells a lot of things but also provides good content for free and this month I saw an interesting article titled The Future of Affiliate Commissions: Facebook Atlas Bridges the Gap between Devices by Gina Broom.

The article caught my attention because I’ve noticed a lot of mention on Wealthy Affiliate about the importance of making sure our websites have a responsive mobile theme. And it’s a good idea because more and more people use their phones to go online.

But this phenomenon brings us to the issue of Broom’s article. The growing factor of people using multiple devices to go online can cause us affiliate marketers to lose commissions. And this is how it could happen: Someone could be browsing on your website, with their smart phone, and click on one of your Amazon affiliate links but not make the purchase until the next day. No problem, right? After all, Amazon puts a cookie on their device that will remember where they linked from when they make their purchase the next day.

This is only true if they make the purchase using their smart phone. But if they use their desktop computer the next day and go directly to Amazon from it, that cookie is not there to credit your website a commission.

It’s even more problematic for those who pay for their advertising. If someone clicks through on one of your ads but doesn’t purchase until later on another device then you have paid to get someone else a sale.

Facebook commissioned a study which revealed that 60% of online adults use at least 2 devices daily while 25% use 3.

Facebook bought Atlas in 2013 to tackle this issue by tracking users across devices instead of using cookies. You can get information on their website: http://atlassolutions.com/why-atlas/cross-device-strategies/. Currently, they’re accepting customers and partners by invitation-only.