Affiliate Ad Hijacking
How to recognise it and protect your brand
by Andy Cooney
August 13, 2024
Close to 75% of the brands we track are impacted by a problem known as affiliate hijacking, yet the issue goes largely unnoticed.
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Affiliate hijackers exploit loopholes in search engines to impersonate brands and place ads on branded keywords. This generates fraudulent commissions, increases costs, and damages the brand's digital marketing programme.
Read this guide to understand affiliate hijacking and how to protect against it.
What Is Affiliate Ad Hijacking?
Affiliate hijackers use loopholes Google & Bing Paid Search to impersonate brands by copying their ads (including destination domain) and placing them on searches for branded keywords.
The example below shows a hijacked ad and an ad from the real brand being run against the brand's keywords. While there are subtle differences, hijacked ads are often indistinguishable to users. ​
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Genuine Ad
Affliate Ad
As Google only serves one ad per domain on a search result page, the affiliate ad is shown instead of the brand's. The hijackers have complex systems in place to hide their actions and create fraudulent commissions.
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Bidding on brand keywords
Hijackers target brand, brand+generic, and misspelt brand keywords because these have low costs, high ad impressions, and high conversion rates. We see the most acute targeting of companies not bidding on their brand terms, as the lack of competition provides cheaper clicks. Industries with low levels of competitor bidding, such as retail, travel, and telco, and/or generous commission payouts (such as gaming and FX) are often targeted.
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Impersonation in Ads
The hijacker duplicates the brand's ad copy, logos, and other identifiable features. Using a loophole, the actual domain is displayed as the ad’s display URL, and some hijackers fraudulently verify their advertiser account as the target brand. Customers see the ad and believe it originates from the legitimate brand. Affiliate hijackers often use multiple ads, all of which steal the brand name of the target company, and iteratively test their messaging to generate the most clicks.
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Obscure Targeting
Affiliate hijackers try very hard to remain hidden, so they target ads in locations and times of the day where they think they will go unnoticed. We see examples of affiliate hijackers bidding outside of office hours and away from office locations, with some particularly sophisticated hijackers targeting specific audience demographics. Marcode detects "phantom hijackers" who hide their activity well enough that we almost never see them - as often as 1 in every 200,000 searches.
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Click-Through Deception
When a user clicks a hijacked ad on the search results page, they are silently redirected to an affiliate network or scam website. Because the click appears to come from the affiliate network, the visitor and transaction data is therefore misattributed: while the user came from a brand search keyword, their sale is attributed to affiliates.
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Advanced Cloaking Techniques
Affiliate hijackers hide their activity using several cloaking techniques and dedicated platforms. These cloaking services try to determine whether the user is a real person or an ad verification bot. If it is the latter, they are redirected directly to the brand’s homepage. Marcode bypasses all known cloaking techniques to uncover the affiliate redirect.
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Landing on the Site and Earning Commission
The affiliate redirects happen so quickly that most users will never notice as they still land on the brand website. The brand believes that the traffic and subsequent purchases originated from genuine affiliate marketing efforts, so it pays a commission to the hijacker.
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In this scenario, the brand pays for traffic and customers they would have acquired directly through organic or paid search. None of this revenue is incremental.
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How Does Affiliate Ad Hijacking Impact
Your Brand?
The Financial Impact of Affiliate Ad Hijacking
Brands pay fraudulently gained commissions to hijackers. This can seem small on a per-transaction basis, but as these operations tend to double down when they find a profitable brand, commission paid can be significant. Marcode has helped our customers recover many thousands of dollars in fraudulent commissions that they were previously paying every month. By strictly enforcing affiliate rules, this commission can instead be used to drive incremental revenue.
The Impact of Ad Hijacking on Paid & Organic Search
Affiliate hijackers create competition in the paid search auction, resulting in higher CPCs. Marcode has seen client brand CPCs fall by as much as 600%, and aggressive hijacking is stopped.
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Advertisers typically see very high CTRs on branded ads. When affiliates hijack paid search ads, these clicks are directed away from the brand's legitimate paid search campaigns or organic search. Brand campaign performance has increased by 125% for our clients when hijackers are removed.
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Hijacking causes search revenue to be reported as affiliate revenue. This spoiled attribution, meaning brands make budgeting decisions based on skewed data. When a brand is suffering from hijacking, the performance of its affiliate marketing programme can be vastly overstated.
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Effects of Affiliate Ad Hijacking on Brand Reputation
As affiliate hijackers impersonate the brand in search ads, there is the risk of wording being used that shouldn't. Common problems include restricted wording for regulated brands, misleading ad copy, or incorrect tone of voice. Hijacked ads are often poorly written and would not be approved by the brands.
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Recognizing Affiliate Ad Hijacking
As affiliates steal the brand's identity and mask their behaviour, spotting the signs of affiliate hijacking can be difficult. Marcode offers a way to quickly check if known hijackers are bidding on your brand.
Below are a few common indicators of hijacking.
Sudden Spikes in Affiliate Commissions
When affiliate revenue suddenly jumps, it can be best to question where it has come from, especially if it seems too good to be true. The affiliate will have disclosed a website and social profiles where they claim to drive traffic. Tools like SEMRush estimate how much traffic websites get, so cross-referencing what is a realistic amount of volume these sites could drive vs. the claimed volumes is a good first step.
Spotting URL Hijacking in the Wild
Sometimes brands will independently notice poor ad copy in branded ad campaigns. To check if the ad is run by the legitimate brand, you can see the advertiser by clicking the kebab menu (three dots) next to an ad in Google. If this doesn't match the brand, then there is a problem. When clicking on the ad, you may have an affiliate code added to the URL; however, because hijackers cloak their activity, this is not always the case. Marcode automates this detection by cross-referencing the advertisers who are running every ad, and bypassing all known cloaking techniques.
Sudden Drops in Search Performance
Affiliate ad hijackers cannibalise paid and organic searches. In our experience, brands often spot a sudden drop in traffic/revenue and cost spikes. This should be paired with an analysis of affiliate commissions to diagnose an ad fraud problem.
Preventive Measures to Protect Your Brand from Ad Hijacking
01
Monitoring Brand Keywords and
Affiliate Campaigns
The most secure way for a brand to protect against hijacking is to monitor their brand search results with a tool like Marcode. By constantly checks who runs ads across multiple locations, Marcode prevents potential hijacking.
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Implementing Secure Affiliate Agreements
Every affiliate program should have measures to stop ad hijacking and affiliate fraud by default. There is never an excuse to allow hijacking, so it should be very clear in the terms that brand bidding is not permitted and that if an affiliate is hijacking ads, they will be removed immediately. In the case of sub-networks, many can share the sub-affiliate source of transactions on a regular cadence - this should be a requirement of allowing these sub-networks to promote the brand.
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Being Selective with Partners
The risk of affiliate abuse increases with the size of the affiliate program. Affiliate hijackers use multiple routes to access a brand's affiliate program, often through subnetworks and consumer cashback sites. We recently worked with Hello Partner to highlight the particular risk APAC subnetworks pose. Ultimately, the closer the brand's relationship with its affiliate partners, the lower the risk of hijacking.
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A brand's affiliate manager should proactively understand affiliate partners and the risk vs reward of working with each.
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Being Cautious with Affiliate Commission
We see hijackers attracted to brands with high commissions. We recommend setting commission levels relative to the risk a particular partner provides. We recommend a cautious commission approach for risky partners such as opaque subnetworks.
Conclusion
Affiliate hijacking can happen to any brand with solid brand search demand. Rogue affiliates place an ad impersonating the brand to generate fraudulent commissions. They employ sophisticated techniques to remain hidden, masking their affiliate details. The affiliate takes a cut of sales that the brand would have otherwise generated through search, costing money and skewing the performance of their affiliate marketing. The affiliate creates inflated search costs due to more competition in the auction.
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Any brand with an affiliate scheme that pays generous commissions has a high volume of brand searches, and has relatively cheap CPCs is at risk of affiliate fraudsters targeting it. In our experience, retail, travel, and telco are particularly impacted, although we work with clients in finance, SaaS, and other industries.
It can be difficult to spot hijacking, but there are early warning signs. Each day hijacking occurs can be very costly, so stopping potential hijacking attempts early is essential. The best way to fight ad hijacking is through a dedicated tool such as Marcode, which tracks searches 24/7 worldwide and bypasses all known cloaking systems. This should be paired with robust, acceptable practices and proactive management of the affiliate program.
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By stopping affiliate hijacking, brands can focus on working with reputable affiliates who drive incremental sales.