How to check your Awin tracking is working

Johan Ekdahl
Founder of Plumfinch · Updated 2026-10-31

Start on the confirmation page: the sale should reach awin1.com with the amount (the subtotal after discounts, without tax and shipping), the order reference, currency, channel and commission group. Then work backwards. The awc click ID has to survive your redirects, and the MasterTag has to load on every page to keep it.

Skip the DevTools: the free scan loads your page in a real browser, accepts and rejects the cookie banner, and shows what the Awin tracking actually sent.

Check one sale end to end

Open your site through an affiliate link, or add ?awc=test to a landing page URL, and check the parameter is still in the address bar after redirects.
With DevTools on the Network tab, filter on dwin1 and confirm the MasterTag loads on the landing page, product pages and checkout, with your advertiser ID in the file name.
Place a test order and filter on awin1. You should see the sale request(s): check amount, ref (the order reference), cr (currency), parts and ch (channel).
Check testmode or test is 0 on your live site; 1 means Awin does not process the conversion.

The fall-back pixel for a sale, as Awin documents it

https://www.awin1.com/sread.img?tt=ns&tv=2&merchant=¹12345&amount=²84.50&ch=³aw&parts=⁴DEFAULT:84.50&ref=⁵10045&cr=GBP&vc=&testmode=⁶0

merchant= your Awin advertiser ID.
amount= subtotal after discounts, without tax, shipping and service charges.
ch= the last-click channel; aw when Awin referred the sale.
parts= commission group and amount. The group code is case-sensitive.
ref= your order reference.
testmode= 0 on the live site; 1 means the sale is not processed.

Example values. Long requests are shortened to the parameters that matter.

Six Awin tracking mistakes

The amount includes tax and shipping

Awin's guidance for the amount is the order subtotal after discounts, excluding tax, shipping and service charges, as a decimal with a dot. Sending the order total pays commission on VAT and delivery fees. The same amount goes into parts, after the commission group code: DEFAULT:84.50.

Channel is always "aw"

The channel parameter tells Awin which source was the last click, so it can deduplicate against your other paid channels. Hard-coding aw means Awin claims sales that a Google or Meta ad closed. Awin's sample code stores the traffic source in a first-party cookie (named source by default, for 30 days) and reads it on the confirmation page, falling back to aw when there is none.

The conversion is declared after the MasterTag runs

The MasterTag reads AWIN.Tracking.Sale when it loads. If your code sets the sale after the MasterTag has already run, nothing is sent, unless you call AWIN.Tracking.run() afterwards. Awin also warns against re-initialising AWIN or AWIN.Tracking as empty objects, which wipes data already set.

var AWIN = AWIN || {};
AWIN.Tracking = AWIN.Tracking || {};
AWIN.Tracking.Sale = {
  amount: '84.50',
  channel: 'aw',
  orderRef: '10045',
  parts: 'DEFAULT:84.50',
  currency: 'GBP',
  voucher: '',
  test: '0'
};

No fall-back pixel or server-to-server tracking

The JavaScript conversion tag alone misses sales when scripts are blocked or the page is left early. Awin lists the fall-back image pixel and server-to-server tracking as mandatory alongside it. Check the confirmation page sends the image request to awin1.com/sread.img with the same values, and that your shop or platform integration sends the sale from the server.

awc lost on the landing page

Affiliate clicks carry awc. If a redirect drops it before the MasterTag can store it, the sale cannot be attributed to the publisher. Test it with the click ID redirect tester, which includes awc.

Commission group codes that do not match

The commission group code in parts is case-sensitive and must exist in your programme. default instead of DEFAULT, or a group renamed in the Awin interface, makes the sale fail validation or land in the wrong group.

At a glance

MasterTag: www.dwin1.com/<advertiser ID>.js, on every page
Sale request: www.awin1.com/sread…?…merchant=<advertiser ID>&amount=…&ref=…&cr=…&parts=…&ch=…
Click ID: awc, added to affiliate clicks
Conversion tag: The AWIN.Tracking.Sale object: amount, orderRef, parts, currency, voucher, channel, test
Mandatory parts: MasterTag, conversion tag, fall-back pixel and server-to-server tracking

What the free scan checks

The Awin MasterTag loads on the page
Only one Awin advertiser ID is tagged
The awc click ID survives your redirects
Awin sale requests do not go out before the visitor accepts cookies, or after "reject all"
No email addresses in plain text in Awin requests

Server-side events (Conversions APIs, server-side tagging) are invisible to a public scan, so the report never marks them as working or broken.

Sources

Based on the platforms' public documentation and the requests their public tags make; menus and names change, so check the linked pages if a step looks different.