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The first signs of affiliate fraud are affiliates that show unnatural growth in affiliate sales. These sales are usually generated very quickly after the start of the cooperation and are then continuously expanded. At first glance, it is not obvious how these affiliates generate them. Critically questioning the affiliate about how the sales were generated can provide a first clue. But affiliates with few sales can also be fraudulent. It always helps to take a critical look at the affiliate KPIs and to question discrepancies directly.

There can be many reasons why affiliate sales increase, but they should be explainable. Sales can be driven by the merchant on the one hand and by the affiliate on the other. Question the figures and enter into a dialogue with the affiliate. If the reasons are not sufficient, you should question the partnership.

Brand bidding is when affiliates place their own ads on the merchant’s brand. Brand misspellings are also used to get around brand protection. The affiliate ad appears next to the brand owner’s search results. The affiliate’s goal is to capture the traffic of someone else’s brand and to set a cookie, for which the affiliate then receives a commission.

Ad hijacking goes one step further than brand bidding. The original ad is copied 1:1 by the affiliate and placed on the search engines. The search engine now sees two identical ads — the merchant’s original and the 1:1 copy — but only ever displays one of them. When the affiliate’s copy is the one delivered, the user does not notice, but the affiliate sets a cookie that earns them a commission. Ad hijacking is clearly fraud.

Unfortunately, keeping an eye on affiliates is very time-consuming, because the internet offers many ways to commit fraud. For example, regions can be excluded or included with geo-targeting so that the merchant never sees the ads. Smaller search engines are also popular for fraud, and there are a number of other options. An automated monitoring solution saves a lot of time here.

Whether brand bidding is allowed is set out in the terms and conditions of each affiliate program. Every merchant should ask what benefit brand bidding brings them: the point of affiliate marketing is to win new customers through new channels, while traffic on their own brand names is something every merchant should generate themselves.

In principle, yes. First, the terms and conditions of your affiliate program have to be adjusted in line with the law; they also regulate how partners may use your trademarks in search engines. With automated monitoring, affiliates bidding on your brand keywords can then be tracked down.