Advertising Abuse: Affiliate Brand Bidding

Tales of Advertising Abuse: Affiliate Brand Bidding

The ad ecosystem is a central pillar of the modern internet, funding free content, services, and applications that users rely on daily. Digital advertising now drives a multibillion-dollar industry, with global ad spend projected to exceed $790 billion annually in 2025 [1], as advertisers seek to reach audiences across platforms and devices through targeted, data-driven approaches. It’s no surprise that various actors are constantly looking for new ways of abusing this ecosystem in different forms including click-fraud, phishing and scam distribution, affiliate marketing frauds, ad-injection, etc.

A typical way for a company to promote its brand is via affiliate marketing that connects the brand with affiliates (publishers) who promote the brand’s products or services in exchange for commissions. Affiliates earn a commission if a customer makes specific user actions (e.g., purchase, registration, trial sign-up etc.) after reaching the brand’s website through the affiliate’s unique tracking link. While this model is intended to reward affiliates for doing promotional work, some affiliates exploit the system.

In this blog, we delve into a lesser-known type of abuse called affiliate brand bidding. Although this practice is not outright illegal, it frequently violates the terms of affiliate agreements. In some regions, it may also infringe on trademark laws. While this tactic doesn’t directly harm users who click these ads, it leads to financial losses for the brands these affiliates feign to support.

What is affiliate brand bidding?

In affiliate brand bidding, an affiliate joins a brand’s affiliate program (such as that of a retail or tech business) but instead of promoting the brand as intended, they advertise their unique tracking link via Google Ads using the brand name as the keyword. This strategy hijacks the brand’s organic traffic from search engines, and forces the brand to pay commissions for traffic they would have otherwise received for free.

For example, consider a user searching for a popular cryptocurrency exchange (Figure 1). Under normal circumstances, the official website of the service would appear at the top of the search results, as it’s expected to be the most relevant. However, because an affiliate is brand bidding, their affiliate link appears first, pushing the organic listing down. When the user clicks on the ad, they are redirected to the official site. Depending on the affiliate program rules, the affiliate may earn a commission either from the user’s visit or specific actions such as a purchase, registration, or trial signup.

To entice users to click the ad, affiliates often copy the brand’s title and description, making their ad nearly identical to the organic result. While advertisers may use trademarks that belong to others, they must follow the criteria mentioned in Google’s Trademark policy [2]. It is unclear if affiliate brand bidding practices are considered misleading by Google’s trademark policy.

Our analysis reveals that affiliate brand bidding in Google Ads is much more prevalent compared to other traditional forms of malvertising. Although it doesn’t pose a direct risk to users—aside from some confusion—it negatively impacts brands by increasing their advertising costs and siphoning away revenue they would have otherwise earned from organic traffic. Additionally, because search ads are purchased via an auction model, when affiliates participate in bidding for branded keywords, the cost-per-click (CPC) for these keywords rises, forcing brands to pay more to maintain their visibility in search results.

(Figure 1)

Affected brands

We examined affiliate brand bidding ads targeting 605 brands over the period of September to October 2024 within the Google US search engine. Our dataset includes companies from a wide range of industries, such as software, marketing, fintech/banking, investments, and e-commerce. These brands represent both established Fortune 500 companies and startups. To conduct the analysis, we performed daily searches using each brand’s name alongside typical organic search keywords (e.g., login, pricing, signup, support, etc.).

In total, we collected nearly 33K advertisements, 6.9% of which were identified by our system as affiliate brand bidding ads. In comparison, a smaller percentage of ads – 0.3% – were identified as malvertising. When examining the brands affected by affiliate brand bidding, we found that 31% of the brands were targeted by this form of abuse. Technology startups are particularly heavily targeted, receiving high volumes of affiliate brand bidding ads. While several Fortune 500 companies are also affected, they tend to experience this abuse at comparatively lower volumes.

While affiliate brand bidding abuse is widespread across various sectors, some industries are disproportionately affected. E-commerce, technology, and marketing and analytics companies are particularly vulnerable, with 45% to 65% of companies in these sectors experiencing at least one instance of brand bidding abuse. This increased targeting may be linked to the rapid market growth these industries, especially e-commerce, have experienced in recent years, making them more attractive targets for affiliate brand bidding. Additionally, companies in these sectors often run more affiliate programs than those in other industries, further increasing their exposure to affiliate brand bidding.

In the table below, we present 5 companies that receive large volumes of affiliate brand bidding ads. Notably, startups receive the largest volume of these ads. We also observed that brands related to AI attract the highest number of affiliate brand bidding ads, likely due to the recent surge in AI-related attention from both the media and the public.

We also observe that multiple abusive advertisers are targeting each brand. The most affected startups are targeted by 1 to 11 different abusive advertisers. On average, brands are targeted by three different advertisers. From the brand’s perspective, this means that, on average, 18% of the advertisers participating in their affiliate programs are using this abusive technique. This highlights the scale of the problem and its potential impact on a brand’s advertising budget and promotional efforts.

Brand Name	Industry Sector	Affiliate Brand Bidding Ads	Abusing Advertisers
EverBee	Software	92	10
BodyGraph Chart	Software	83	6
MaxAI.me	Software	83	1
AppSumo	Software	77	8
Fireflies.ai	Software	76	11

Abusive advertisers

From the 4.2K advertisers in our dataset, 7.3% (312) of them were involved in affiliate brand bidding with at least one ad of this type. These advertisers may be individuals or ad agencies participating in affiliate programs for the brands they promote. Agencies might create separate Google Ad accounts for each brand or run all ads under their main Google Ads agency account. The situation becomes more complex as some agencies may sublet these accounts, allowing third-party advertisers to place ads of their choice under their privileged accounts. This practice effectively allows advertisers to bypass Google’s identity verification policies by operating under the same shared account.

Google has implemented an identity verification program to help create a safe and trustworthy ad ecosystem for users [4]. In the past, unverified accounts have been associated with malvertising and other fraudulent activity. Our analysis shows that 72% of the abusive advertisers are verified by Google, and 89% of all affiliate brand bidding ads come from verified accounts. This highlights that while identity verification is a useful security measure, it is insufficient for addressing affiliate brand bidding abuse.

In the table below, we list the top 5 advertisers with the most brand bidding ads. All of these advertisers are verified by Google and published hundreds of affiliate brand bidding ads during our analysis period, targeting between 8 and 54 distinct brands. Notably, the majority of the ads from these advertisers (80% to 95%) are brand bidding ads, indicating that this is a common practice for them. Despite the high volume of ads, there is little online information about the identities of these advertisers, with only one having a clear web presence. However, there are anecdotal reports on online forums and social media platforms that highlight concerns about some of these advertisers. For example, Trustpilot reviews mention Xun Meng International Limited for promoting ads for fake online e-shops [10, 11], and Twitter posts accuse Traffic Heroes Ltd of running fake ads [12].

Advertiser	Country	Type	Account Verified by Google	Web Presence	Brand Bidding Ads (% over all Advertiser Ads)	Targeted Brands
Xun Meng International Limited	Hong Kong	Company	Yes	No	457 (95%)	54
Bringme Consultant Services Limited	Hong Kong	Company	Yes	No	229 (87%)	23
Traffic Heroes Ltd.	Gibraltar	Company	Yes	Yes	149 (80%)	13
HERA SEO SRL	Romania	Company	Yes	No	99 (92%)	12
Saba Fatima	Pakistan	Individual	Yes	No	92 (94%)	8

A closer investigation on social media uncovered advertisements promoting access to the Google Ad accounts of “Xun Meng International Limited”, a Hong Kong-based advertiser. The ads were placed in a public Vietnamese Facebook group (see Figures 2 & 3). This indicates that these accounts are being sub-leased to other parties, allowing them to post ads under the same privileged accounts. By doing so, these actors can bypass Google’s identity verification requirements and run (potentially abusive) ads while keeping their true identities hidden.

(Figures 2 & 3)

Location of abusive advertisers

Although our analysis focuses solely on Google ads in the U.S., we found advertisers from 82 separate countries. Some countries exhibit particularly high ratios of affiliate brand bidding ads compared to all ads from that country. The plot below (Figure 4) highlights the top ten countries with the highest proportion of affiliate brand bidding ads, showing that Gibraltar, Brazil, Vietnam, Pakistan, Romania, and Hong Kong are among the countries where the majority of ads are affiliate brand bidding ads. In contrast, the United States—which accounts for the largest share of all ads—has a relatively low ratio of 2.2%, indicating that this type of abuse is much less common among US-based advertisers.

(Figure 4)

How to protect your brand

There are several strategies brands can use to protect themselves from affiliate brand bidding abuse. First, brands should update their affiliate program terms and conditions to explicitly prohibit this practice. While updating these terms alone won’t immediately stop abusers, it is crucial to inform affiliates about the potential penalties for engaging in this behavior, such as termination of the affiliate relationship or withholding commissions.

Second, we recommend that brands trademark their terms with their national trademark offices and register these trademarks with Google using the Trademark Authorization form. This allows brands to submit trademark complaints to Google for each abusive ad affecting their brands.

A third option is to block referrals from Google Ads automatically [7]. This approach relies on URL parameters that Google can change at any time. For example, the ‘gclid’ parameter, which this method checks for, can currently be disabled by advertisers [8]. Additionally, affiliates could circumvent this measure by using cloaking services to redirect traffic, making the original click from Google Ads undetectable.

Finally, to fully protect your brand from affiliate brand bidding abuse, you need to actively monitor ads related to your brand name, identify any abusing ads, and request that Google remove them.