Partner Federation Glossary — last updated September 2026
Attribution Window is the total span of time and method a program uses to decide whether a conversion still counts as coming from a partner’s referral. Cookie duration is the most common piece of it — how long a browser cookie stays valid after a click — but a full attribution window can also include server-side click-ID matching (postback/S2S tracking) that isn’t tied to a browser at all.
Why It Matters for Partners
It’s easy to conflate this with cookie duration alone, but a program using S2S tracking on top of — or instead of — cookies can credit a conversion well outside its stated cookie length, while a cookie-only program genuinely loses the referral the moment that cookie expires or gets cleared. It’s worth understanding which mechanism a program actually relies on before judging whether a stated “30-day window” is generous or thin.
For the full breakdown of how tracking and attribution actually work together, see Tracking & Attribution.