Can a Shopper Have Cookies from Different Affiliates?

A merchant wrote:

I wanted to see if you knew what happened if a shopper has more than one cookie from different affiliates, and then makes a purchase.

I think this would be very likely to happen and was wondering who would get the commission, etc.

This is a very good question for someone new to affiliate marketing to ask.

The way things currently work is that a vast majority of affiliate networks (and affiliate program software applications) have the last referring affiliate’s cookie set to overwrite the previous affiliate’s one. So, the above-mentioned scenario is generally impossible. Simply put, the end user has only one affiliate cookie on his/her computer, and it is always the cookie set by the last affiliate that referred the shopper to you. This rule is also known as “the last cookie wins” rule.

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