Mistake: trusting last-click in a cookieless world

Mistake: trusting last-click in a cookieless world
Everyone still credits the last cookie before checkout. Half those cookies are dead — Safari nukes them in 7 days, ad blockers eat them, users switch devices, and your network silently undercounts.

What actually happens:
— You drive a signup that takes 21 days to convert. Cookie expired at day 7. You get nothing.
— The program shows it as "direct" or hands credit to whoever touched last.

Fix: prefer programs with server-side tracking, longer cookie windows (45-90 days), and coupon/sub-ID attribution that survives cookie death. Use a unique discount code as a backup ledger you control. Reconcile your own click logs against their reported conversions monthly — a >15% gap is a tracking problem, not a traffic problem.

Verdict: if your attribution depends on a browser cookie in 2026, you're getting robbed and calling it a slow month.