How conversions get attributed to the affiliate who earned them

Attribution is how a platform decides which affiliate, campaign, channel, and creative gets credit for a conversion. It is the single idea that answers most "why doesn't this sale have an affiliate?" questions, and once you can follow the chain, the answer is almost always obvious. Here is how it works in LimeliJourney.

The chain: click, click ID, conversion

1. A visitor clicks an affiliate's tracking link. The platform records the click and mints a unique click ID.
2. The visitor is redirected to your landing page, with the click ID and a visitor ID available both on the URL and as cookies set on your tracking domain. That means the same browser can be recognized later even if your pages do not carry the click ID all the way through.
3. When the conversion happens, your conversion pixel (or a server-to-server postback) fires, ideally carrying that click ID.
4. The platform looks up the click and copies its affiliate, campaign, channel, and creative onto the conversion. Attribution done.

Cookie fallback

If the pixel fires without a click ID, the tracker falls back to the click-ID cookie set at click time, as long as that click is still inside the offer's attribution window. The window is 30 days by default and can be raised to 90 or 365 days per offer. Two safety rules keep it honest: a cookie click from another account is never honored, and a click older than the window no longer attributes by cookie. An explicit click ID on the pixel always anchors the match, whatever its age.

Cookie attribution is most reliable on a first-party tracking domain such as track.yourbrand.com, because some browsers withhold third-party cookies on shared subdomains.

First touch versus last touch

When several affiliates send the same visitor to an offer, the offer's payment model decides which click gets the credit and the payout:

• Last touch (the default) credits the visitor's most recent click before the conversion.
• First touch credits the visitor's earliest click inside the attribution window. The affiliate who introduced the visitor keeps the sale, even if a later affiliate's click ID is on the conversion pixel.

Under first touch, only clicks for the same offer are considered, expired clicks are skipped so the earliest click still inside the window wins, and the payout comes from that credited click's own terms.

What "unattributed" means

An unattributed conversion is one that could not be tied to any click and named no affiliate. It is still recorded, but its revenue and payout are set to zero, it is excluded from conversion counts and totals, nobody is paid for it, and no affiliate postback fires. Storage is not attribution: the row exists so you can diagnose it, not so it counts.

Common causes: the pixel fired without a click ID and no usable cookie was available (a blocked third-party cookie, a different device, or a click older than the window); the click ID did not match any recorded click; the pixel named a different offer than the visitor's last click; or the visitor simply came directly, without a tracking link.

Why payouts are frozen at click time

The money side of a conversion, both the affiliate payout and the amount the advertiser pays you, is snapshotted at click time. When the click is recorded, the contract terms in force at that moment, including any campaign or per-source overrides, are stamped onto the click. The conversion later inherits that snapshot.

This has three useful consequences. Editing a payout changes future clicks only, so an affiliate keeps the terms they were promised when they sent the traffic. Reports stay stable, because yesterday's numbers do not silently change when someone edits a rate today. And the precedence is always most-specific-wins: a per-source override beats a campaign override, which beats the contract.

Attribution is the backbone of a trustworthy program. Want to watch a click get captured first-party and flow all the way through to an attributed conversion? Book a demo and we will run it on your kind of data.