What do users see when they type your brand’s name in search? Hopefully, it’s your official website, social media accounts, or some other trusted resources. Yet, more and more often potential customers see paid ads from:
• An affiliate who bids on your branded keywords and steals your organic traffic to get commissions.
• A competitor that targets your audience and hijacks your traffic and clients.
• A fraudster who imitates your official website and steals your customers’ data and money.
That is called brand bidding, and it’s happening every day. Especially, after your team’s working hours or at GEOs which your marketing team can’t fully cover and check for violations. This is the very reason why brand reputation monitoring is now harder than ever: fraudsters have learnt a lot of ways to hide their violations.
Many brands think that their advertising is completely under control as they have banned brand bidding in the affiliate program rules. Or, they have a specialist who is responsible for manual brand monitoring.
Unfortunately, manual monitoring isn’t enough in 2025. Fraudsters may run ads only at night, show them to specific IPs, or use deceptive landing pages that your brand never sees. Without automated detection, these cases of brand abuse in advertising go unnoticed, draining your paid traffic budget and damaging user trust.
The good news is, there are automated tools for effective brand protection. Let’s dive into detail to learn more about digital ad fraud and brand monitoring software.
Key Risks That Threaten Your Brand in Paid Search
According to Adthena, up to 65% of brands experience paid search violations related to third-party advertisers using their name. A ClickCease study found that up to 25% of branded search budgets could be wasted because traffic was “stolen” by competitors or dishonest affiliates.
Let’s have a look at the most common digital ad fraud tactics:
Brand bidding. Third-party advertisers buy paid ads placements for your branded keywords. Users see their ads when searching for your brand’s name. You lose organic traffic which either converts through your affiliates’ links or goes to your competitors.
Ad hijacking. Fraudsters imitate your ads, including their ad copy, visual part, and links. This makes users think they click on your own ad but they go to the affiliate’s website. Worse, if it’s not an unscrupulous affiliate but a fraudster aiming to steal personal or banking information.
Brand abuse in advertising. Fraudsters use your trademark without your permission. This way, they can run landing pages with your brand’s name, so that users think it’s an official resource. The pitfall there is that aggressive advertising, low-quality pages, or fake discounts will be associated with your trademark.
URL hijacking. Fraudsters use links that look like yours while they may differ in just one letter. Users think that they are going to your site while the link leads to a third-party resource. So, the fraudster gets traffic and money from your advertising because of poor affiliate marketing fraud detection.
Fake coupons. Advertisements promise discounts that don't actually exist. The user clicks to get an "exclusive" coupon, but ends up disappointed and losing trust in the brand. Also, affiliates require commissions for coupon traffic even though users might find their coupons at the last step of purchase.
To combat those threats, businesses should work on effective brand protection.
Why Manual Brand Monitoring Fails in Paid Search
Violators have found their own ways to bypass manual brand reputation monitoring:
Cloaking. This technique involves showing different content or ads to users and moderators. While the system sees compliant material, real users are exposed to unauthorized or misleading ads, making affiliate marketing fraud detection through manual checks very difficult. To combat this tactic effectively, brands are increasingly turning to advanced affiliate de-cloaking tools that uncover what cloaked URLs actually display to real users.
GEO targeting. Fraudsters limit their ads to specific geographic regions where affiliate marketing fraud detection is weak or absent. This means violations can occur unnoticed in certain countries or cities, bypassing the usual oversight.
Dayparting fraud. Offenders schedule their ads to run only during off-hours, such as late nights or weekends, when teams are less likely to review search results, allowing illicit ads to fly under the radar.
Device targeting. Fraudsters tailor their ads to appear only on mobile devices so they can avoid detection by teams who primarily monitor desktop results. This selective display makes manual spotting nearly impossible.
Without brand monitoring software, brands can only check their SERPs manually. This may lead to several unpleasant outcomes:
• Click-through-rate (CTR) becomes lower.
• CPC (cost-per-click) goes up.
• Your marketing team competes with your own affiliates.
• You pay for your own organic leads as if they were new customers.
• Clients associate negative experiences they had with fraudsters with your brand.
Manual monitoring is a convenient way to start working on effective brand protection. You can just type your brand’s name in Google and check if there are any suspicious activities in your SERP. Yet, this will only show search results from one GEO and device, while violations may be hidden a lot deeper.
What Effective Brand Protection Looks Like Today
Effective brand protection is all about being two steps ahead of violators. Modern brand monitoring tools, AI, and quick well-informed decisions makes that possible. Let’s explore what exactly brand reputation monitoring should include.
Automated brand monitoring. Professional tools check your SERPs 24/7 from different GEOs, devices, and browsers to find all the violations. Brand monitoring software frees up your marketing team, saves budgets, and reputation.
Quick actions. The sooner you block the violator, the less damage will be caused. Your team needs a clear procedure for the cases when a violation is found. Automated tools are also helpful as they immediately notify you about the violations.
In-depth analytics. To make strategic decisions, clear analytics are needed: where and when violations occur, who commits them most often, how much money is lost, etc. Brand monitoring software can also generate reports with detailed evidence of violations.
Legal support. Sometimes, effective brand protection requires not only a technical solution, but also legal support: preparing claims, negotiating with violators, and filing lawsuits.
AI integration. Modern tools use AI to detect complex fraud patterns that humans may not always be able to spot, such as recognizing fake sites, traffic anomalies, or unusual targeting settings.
The Role of Digital Ad Fraud in Brand Losses
Affiliate fraud refers to the actions of unscrupulous affiliates who abuse brands to earn more commissions. For example, they may violate affiliate program rules and hide the violations using dayparting, GEO targeting, etc.
Affiliates gain access to your brand and start using its name, logo, or advertising materials without permission or in violation of the terms. For example, they may launch advertising campaigns with keywords containing the brand name, but drive traffic to their own sites or landing pages. As a result, you pay them a commission for customers who were already looking for you.
Imagine: you have an online electronics store called TechWorld that sells smartphones and gadgets. You work with an affiliate program where affiliates receive a commission for new customers.
One of the affiliates runs ads for queries with your brand — for example, “TechWorld iPhone discount”. Instead of sending users to your official website, the affiliate leads them to his website with an affiliate link. Users would have come to you directly anyway, but now you pay the affiliate a commission for organic traffic.
Another affiliate creates a fake website similar to TechWorld and advertises non-existent promotions. Customers want to buy from you, but the prices turn out to be higher than it was promised . As a result, your brand reputation suffers — customers associate a bad experience with your store.
Affiliate fraud detection is a must if you work with affiliates. Otherwise, you may end up with a lot of leads and huge financial losses at the same time.
How Bluepear Protects Your Brand in Search
Bluepear is an AI powered brand monitoring tool. The system protects your brand from digital ad fraud. Here’s how it works:
• You set a list of branded keywords for brand reputation monitoring.
• Bluepear checks every branded SERP 24/7 from different GEOs, browsers, and devices.
• Affiliate marketing fraud detection system de-cloaks websites to check what real users see.
• Bluepear saves all the screenshots, URLs, IDs to compile a sufficient evidence report.
• The tool sends real-time alerts to your messenger so that you can take quick actions.
• The brand reputation monitoring service shows you a detailed report for every discovered violation.
Bluepear does the work of a large monitoring team in just a few clicks. While your marketing team can focus on developing brand protection strategies and advertising campaigns.
Final Takeaways for Your Marketing Team
Here’s a checklist for effective brand protection:
• Use automated tools to monitor your brand across all channels.
• Track geo- and time-targeted ad violations.
• Set up instant alerts for brand abuse in advertising.
• Get detailed violation reports with key info.
• Have fast takedown processes with ad platforms.
• Ensure legal support for serious cases.
• Train your team on brand policies regularly.
If you are not 100% sure about your SERPs from every GEO, device, and browser, it’s better to double check the brand’s online presence.
