Brand Infringement Affiliate Fraud And Its Impact On Your Brand's Reputation

By Author: selinsjesse
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Affiliate marketing is a reliable and effective way for brands to extend their reach online. It is a type of performance-based marketing. In affiliate marketing, your marketing team pays commissions to the affiliates. Affiliate marketing has been in existence for the last decade.

In affiliate marketing, there’s money involved, and it is susceptible to nefarious intents. Affiliate fraud is ever-evolving, and malicious affiliates leverage new techniques to accomplish their objectives. As a result, marketing teams of reputed brands have to monitor their affiliate networks to prevent nefarious affiliates from stealing commissions.

Fraud in affiliate marketing has a direct impact on a brand’s reputation. The brand name is the unique identity of a business. Any type of illegal activity that aims at cheating your company’s marketing team, legitimate affiliates or buyers is affiliate fraud.

Malicious affiliates apply techniques that mislead merchants into paying affiliate commissions. Your company’s marketing team should know how affiliate fraud contributes to brand infringement ...
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Overview of Brand Infringement
A brand refers to an intangible asset assigned to a particular organization or product. It is a concept that assists individuals in recognizing different entities. A brand can include a logo, name, slogans and color. The name of a brand helps in the creation of a perception of the company or product.

In the modern world, brands rely on trademarks, patents and copyrights to attract target audiences. Nefarious affiliates use the brand’s Intellectual Property to attract traffic and gain commissions. Using a brand’s intellectual property affects its reputation adversely.

Modern-day brands should adhere to affiliate marketing compliance. Brands rely on several ways to stay vigilant to make sure that there is no infringement. Monitoring affiliate marketing campaigns and inbound traffic is crucial to ensure proper compliance.

Ways in which Malicious Affiliates Infringe a Brand’s Intellectual Property
Brand infringement affects the reputation of your company. Threat actors siphon away the commissions of your company’s legitimate affiliates. In affiliate fraud, publishers and websites attribute affiliate sales to the threat actor. All legitimate websites involved in your company’s affiliate campaign can get affected by fraud. Here are some of how affiliate fraud infringes your brand’s intellectual property.

Typosquatting
Threat actors register domain names to mimic legitimate sources and trick online buyers. The malicious affiliates can steal the credentials of the users. They can also drop malware onto the devices of your users. Typosquatting is suitable for nefarious affiliates to collect the personal information of your customers.

Phishing Attacks
Malicious affiliates execute phishing attacks with the help of emails. They send emails containing the logo and name of your brand to users. The main intention is to drop malware onto the systems of your clients. Customers respond to such emails seeing your brand’s name but end up being a victim of fraud.

Paid Ads Violation
Paid ad violation is another effective way of infringing upon your brand’s reputation. Malicious affiliates can hijack paid advertising on popular search engines to redirect your users to false websites. It causes your brand to lose convertible traffic.

During paid ads violation, your brand cannot compete against the keywords. It is a significant type of ad fraud that needs extensive monitoring.

Cookie Stuffing
Cookie stuffing can harm the reputation of your brand. It is a popular type of affiliate fraud, and your marketing team should be aware of it. It happens when threat actors add illicit cookies to a website that your users browse. They often usurp the cookies planted by your legitimate affiliates. It allows the nefarious affiliate to misattribute any actions taken by the visitors.

Consequences of Infringement on your Brand’s Reputations
Brand infringement is one of the most standard strategies used by malicious affiliates to harm your company’s reputation.

The primary objective of brand infringement is to mislead the customers. You will notice a constant dip in sales and revenue with violations. The bounce rate of your company’s official website will increase during affiliate fraud. Here are the expected consequences associated with brand infringement.

Decreases the Trust of Customers
Malicious affiliates use unfair strategies to collect the personal data of your customers. They redirect customers from one platform to the other. It hurts the customers’ trust in your brand.

Loss of Advertising Funds
Using your brand’s name and logo on promotional campaigns and misleading users can hurt your brand’s reputation. Threat actors leverage the intellectual property of your company to get illegitimate commissions. Nefarious affiliates can also affect your brand’s intellectual property in places that affects its reputation.

How can Virus Positive Technologies Prevent Brand Infringement?
Virus Positive Technologies (VPT) is pioneering ad fraud detection. VPT uses Machine Learning (ML) and reverses engineering approaches to monitor your affiliate network. You can now manage your affiliate networks with real-time monitoring from VPT. By effective monitoring, it will become easier to minimize affiliate fraud and brand infringement.