The adaptation of affiliate program tracking infrastructure to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, EU) and UK GDPR, which restrict the use of browser cookies and require explicit consent for personal data processing. GDPR and its sister regulation the ePrivacy Directive (often called the Cookie Directive) create specific requirements for the cookie-based tracking that traditional affiliate programs rely on. Core GDPR requirements affecting affiliate tracking: consent requirement: placing tracking cookies on EU/UK consumer browsers requires explicit, freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous consent; a pre-ticked cookie consent checkbox is not compliant; consumers who decline tracking cannot have affiliate tracking cookies placed; data minimization: collect only the data necessary for the affiliate transaction (purchase confirmation, order value, commission calculation); purpose limitation: data collected for affiliate tracking cannot be repurposed for other uses without separate consent. Technical responses to GDPR: server-to-server (S2S) tracking: the primary GDPR adaptation for affiliate tracking; S2S tracking sends conversion data directly from the brand's server to the affiliate network's server, without placing a cookie on the consumer's browser; S2S tracking is consent-mode compatible and substantially reduces GDPR compliance risk; cookie-based tracking with consent: traditional cookie tracking adapted to fire only after explicit consumer consent; requires consent management platform (CMP) integration. Practical impact: GDPR reduces tracked conversion volume from EU/UK traffic because some consumers decline tracking; this is a real reduction in tracked conversions, not program performance decline; S2S tracking minimizes the gap by capturing consented and some non-consented conversions server-side.
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