I just bailed (and as a courtesy informed the affiliate manager that I bailed) on a launch by a VERY big name marketer for a course that looks terrific in a launch sequence that seems professional.
My problem: they encourage pre-launch buzz building, lead referrals etc but they use last-in-cookie.
That was a very important question for me. As soon as the affiliate manager confirmed it was last-cookie, I dropped out.
Possibly $10-$14k gross lost on their part (though I'm *SURE* the promotion will still be a mega multiple 7-figure success without me, lol).
Here's the important thing...
If you have a product where the cart is already open (ie: prospect can buy anytime) then YES last-cookie is the only fair system.
If, however, you want your affiliates to refer leads to you, to feed your sales funnel so that YOU can close their referrals to them (THAT is what a launch process entails)... then, no, using last cookie is illogical and unfair.
As the merchant, since it's primarily your job to close the sale that I referred once I sent you the lead, the lead should be "locked in" to the referrer.
There's a different launch happening (the biggest in IM history as far as everyone and their dog is concerned, prob a $30 mill launch, I'm predicting) that does use locked in leads. Smart thinking. Encourages the biggest players to feed as many leads as quickly as they can into the funnel.
Otherwise there is ZERO true incentive for an aff to promote early. They only would want to promote days immediately prior to the launch and on the day of (and someone like me would only promote such a system AFTER the launch).
Make sure you're factoring these things in when you put together your affiliate-fueled launch strategy.