How do affiliate aggregators reliably know about the occurrence of a target event (for example, payment for goods)?

Question

Partnership programs

Hello.
A lot of affiliate programs are distributed through specialized services, including affiliate programs to attract users (payment for registration) or customers to an online store (purchase a product / service). How do partner systems find out information about the occurrence of an event (registration is completed or the goods are paid)? In particular, the question is about the reliability of this information, because the site "customer" can hide the fact of registration / purchase, they say the user came, but did not register / did not buy - thereby paying, say, 1000 registrations / buyers - get 2 ... 3 .. .4 thousand... What mechanisms do partner services have to deal with such fraud? Thank you.

Answer 1

The registration itself is tracked using a control pixel placed on the advertiser's (customer's) website. A person has placed an order, and on the Thank You Page, a pixel is displayed, in which the number, amount, and other parameters of the order are transmitted.
An advertiser can trick the network in two steps:
1. Don't show the check pixel on the thank you page, or don't show it for all orders. This case is caught by constant checks by employees of affiliate networks (aggregators of affiliate programs).
2. Cancel orders at the time of reconciliation, i.e. the order has been redeemed, but the affiliate network is informed that it has been cancelled. Here the advertiser may stumble upon a check, because the affiliate network has the right to request documents confirming the cancellation of any order in accordance with the contract. Or, if the order was placed through the CashBack site, the user will be followed by a claim that he received the goods, but there is no commission on it. Then the network begins legal proceedings with such an advertiser, and either disables its affiliate program, adding advertisers to the black list, or imposes a large fine.
It is important to understand that any fraud with orders is immediately reflected in the statistics of the advertiser's affiliate program, and if the partner is not satisfied with the result, he will immediately stop promoting such a low-income advertiser.

Answer 2

I join the question...