I’ve put together an Affiliate/CPA Directory for you to help you choose ad networks and products to promote. Another consideration when choosing your networks is the problem of affiliate cookies being intercepted by popular spyware detection programs. The problem of cookie deletion has long been a problem of the online ad industry. A report from independent spyware researcher Ben Edelman highlights the degree to which spyware detection software gobbles up your commissions by intercepting affiliate cookies.

Edelman studied 11 spyware detection programs to determine which ones devoured cookies from a range of 50 ad systems, including ad networks, affiliate networks and Yahoo’s and Google’s pay-per-click ad systems. These spyware detection programs included McAfee Internet Security Suite, Symantec’s Norton Internet Security and Microsoft Windows Defender, LavaSoft’s Ad-Aware, PC Tools’s Spybot Search and Destroy, Webroot’s Spy Sweeper, and ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite. Read the rest of this entry »

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