Pie Pushes for Unified Stand-Down Practice in Affiliate Marketing

The company Pie, best known for its Adblock browser extension, has put a call out to the affiliate industry, advocating for the standardisation of the afsrc=1 parameter to strengthen stand-down practices.

In a blog post, Pie describes afsrc=1 as a ‘simple and consistent’ approach to standing down. The company has now even open-sourced its stand-down rules.

What is afsrc=1?

The afsrc=1 parameter is a method of ‘standing down.’ 

In our analysis of MegaLag’s PayPal Honey video, we broke down what standing down means in affiliate marketing. 

Networks have different names for it, but it is all ultimately pointing towards the same thing. 

It’s some kind of notifier that pops up during the customer journey to help publishers discern whether they are interrupting another affiliate’s conversion path. 

If they are doing so, they can choose to ‘stand down’, where they do not claim commission on the sale.

Standing down erupted into the general dialogue of affiliate marketing earlier this year. As PayPal Honey and other browser extensions received accusations of scamming creators out of their affiliate commissions, discussions around these policies (as well as dynamic attribution) bloomed in the mainstream.