Affiliate Fraud: Detect, Defend & Protect your Brand

Affiliate infringements are far more prevalent than traditional ad fraud. That is a set of practices that are unethical and could damage the reputation of a brand. This includes a practice known as brand bidding, in which the trademark of a brand is used to drive traffic to their sites, or the use of influencer coupon codes to inflate sales metrics artificially.

Very often, affiliates would also make IP violations such as typo-squatting, a method that uses small misspell of the brand’s URL to route traffic to harmful websites. Such violations not only compromise the overall effectiveness of the affiliate campaign but also erode the trust created between the brand and its legitimate affiliates.

Types of Affiliate Ad Campaigns Brand must Track for Full-Funnel Protection

There are different types of affiliate fraud contingent upon the commission structure of the campaign, and they may be classified as follows:

Cost-Per-Click (CPC)

In this, for every click on an ad, the affiliate would make money. It is prone to click fraud wherein bots and click farms inflate the number of clicks but engage no real customer.

Cost-Per-Leads (CPL)

The affiliates are paid according to customer actions such as the form submissions and signing up on emails. In this aspect, the most common tactic fraudsters would use is fake leads or invalid customer actions.

Cost-Per-Sale (CPS)

Affiliates get paid according to commissions on sales that are completed. Manipulation with this model typically happens through the pushing of fake transactions or exploiting return policies for gaining commissions from sales later reversed.

read more about affiliate fraud monitoring.