Hello all you adwords experts. How do you deal with cookies, when you are trying to figure out what is a good keyword. An example. I have a campaign called red shoes, and my affiliate gives me 30 day cookies. All week I have been trying to sell red shoes, lots of click thrus and no sales.. I am getting a little pissed with the campaign, so I start tweaking things a bit, no change in my sales, so I decide to stop my campaign... Its probably a dead fish. A couple weeks later I see I have sold lots of red shoes, but since I haven't run this campaign in a while. I can only assume that this was from before. I feel like I am fishing in a very large submarine with no periscope, and sonar that comes back in 2 weeks. oh well back to paying for adwords, someone has to keep google afloat.
Google uses cookies to help record conversions. They do this so you can get credit for a conversion that occurs in a separate visit. Google's cookies will only last 30 days before they expire. The problem I run into is Google doesn't display the conversion on the day of the click. For example, if I clicked on the PPC ad on 7/16/2007 but didn't make my conversion until 7/18/2007 then the conversion will be displayed with the results on 7/18/2007. When measuring the success of my campaigns, I try to do it on a monthly level or no shorter than weekly. It sounds like your affiliate is doing the same thing.
A lot of affiliates and other places have you believe it is all automated. It is not. It involves some geek pressing a button, printing a report and making a paper trail. If he is off, on holiday, training etc, you wait, and then you waste time pondering lifes mysterys, like what did I do to increse conversion? Nothing. Some dude never pressed the button.