Is there a method to detect if the cookies used by your affiliates are being blocked? I know that Spybot adds rules to both Internet Explorer and Firefox to block cookies from affiliates such as Commission Junction and Linkshare. I'm sure there are other ad-blocking programs that proactively block cookies.

Not sure how old this article is, there is no date given, but it has a big list of ad-blocking programs and which cookies they detect:

http://www.vinnylingham.com/specialreports/cookiedetections/#results

Then, consider this: Spybot has been downloaded 105,035,491 from download.com, 8,303,608 from pcworld.com, not to mention all the other download sites out there and safer-networking themselves. Makes one wonder just how many commissions CPA bloggers are losing.

Of course you can't prevent users from scanning their computers and manually deleting cookies. But, if you can detect that the affiliate cookies are being blocked and give the visitor a prompt, it could be just one less lost commission.

Does anyone use this type of cookie detection or know how this could be implemented?

Not without having something installed on the end user machine.

Hi,
" Spybot has been downloaded 105,035,491 from download.com, 8,303,608 from pcworld.com " . That really scares me. I do not know if there is any method to detect if the cookies used by the affiliates are being blocked. I'll keep my eyes and ears open. If I get any information I'll post it here.