Affiliate marketing is designed to help brands reach new audiences through publishers and partners who promote their products or services in exchange for commissions. But the model can be abused when affiliates use paid search ads to capture users who are already looking for the brand. This practice is known as affiliate brand bidding.

In a typical case, an affiliate bids on a brand’s name or related branded keywords, then directs the user to the legitimate website through an affiliate tracking link. Depending on the program’s rules, the affiliate may receive a commission for traffic or actions the brand might otherwise have acquired directly.

When this activity violates affiliate program terms, it can become a form of advertising abuse creating unnecessary costs, complicating attribution, and reducing a brand’s control over its own search presence.

Bfore examined affiliate brand bidding across hundreds of brands to understand how widespread the practice is and how it affects organizations.

What is Affiliate Brand Bidding?

Affiliate brand bidding occurs when an affiliate uses paid search advertising to target a brand’s name or branded search terms and directs resulting traffic through an affiliate tracking link.

The customer journey may look like this:

User searches for a brand → Affiliate ad appears → User clicks → Traffic passes through an affiliate link → User reaches the brand’s website

For example, a user searching for a company’s name, pricing, login page, or signup page may see an affiliate’s paid ad. The affiliate can benefit from traffic generated by a user who already intended to find the brand.

The practice is not automatically illegal or prohibited in every situation. Affiliate programs set their own rules around paid search, and Google treats trademark use in advertising according to specific policy criteria.

Google’s current trademark policy does not restrict using trademarks as keywords. However, following a trademark complaint, Google may restrict certain uses of a trademark in ad copy, including uses it considers confusing, deceptive, or misleading.

The key issue for brands is therefore whether the affiliate’s advertising activity is permitted under the affiliate program and how it is presented to users.

Why Can Affiliate Brand Bidding Become Advertising Abuse?

Affiliate advertising itself is not the problem. The concern arises when an affiliate captures existing branded demand in a way the brand has not authorized. This can lead to several issues:

• Higher advertising costs: Additional advertisers competing for branded queries can add auction competition.
• Unnecessary affiliate commissions: A brand may pay a commission for traffic it could have received without the affiliate.
• Reduced control over branded search: Affiliate ads can appear prominently when users search specifically for the brand.
• Attribution challenges: It becomes harder to determine whether affiliate activity generated new demand or intercepted existing demand.
• Affiliate program violations: Bidding on branded terms may directly conflict with program rules.

This is why the practice can be categorized as affiliate advertising abuse when it violates agreed restrictions.

Affiliate Brand Bidding vs. Legitimate Affiliate Advertising

Not every affiliate ad involving a brand should be treated as abusive. The distinction depends largely on the affiliate program’s terms and the advertising activity itself.

The important question is not simply whether an affiliate is advertising, but whether that advertising is authorized and genuinely contributes to customer acquisition.

How Common is Affiliate Brand Bidding?

Bfore analyzed Google Search ads targeting 605 brands in the U.S. between September and October 2024. The dataset included brands across software, marketing, fintech and banking, investments, and e-commerce. The analysis found:

• Nearly 33,000 advertisements in the dataset.
• 6.9% identified as affiliate brand-bidding ads.
• 31% of brands targeted by affiliate brand bidding.
• 312 of approximately 4,200 advertisers, or 7.3%, involved in at least one identified instance.
• An average of three advertisers targeting each affected brand.

Bfore also found that e-commerce, technology, and marketing and analytics companies were particularly exposed during the study period, with 45% to 65% of companies in those sectors experiencing at least one identified instance.

These findings apply specifically to Bfore’s dataset, the U.S. Google Search market, and the September-October 2024 research period. They should not be treated as a current prevalence rate for every industry, country, or advertising platform.

How Does This Compare With Malvertising?

Affiliate brand bidding and malvertising can both fall within the broader discussion of advertising abuse, but they present different risks.

Affiliate brand bidding generally redirects a user to the legitimate brand’s website through an affiliate mechanism. The primary concerns are advertising costs, commissions, attribution, and program compliance.

Malvertising uses ads to direct users toward malicious content, including scams, phishing pages, malware, or other harmful destinations.

In Bfore’s dataset, 6.9% of analyzed ads were identified as affiliate brand bidding, compared with 0.3% identified as malvertising.

This distinction matters because the response to an affiliate program violation may differ from the response required for a malicious advertising campaign.

Why is Affiliate Brand Bidding Difficult to Detect?

Affiliate brand bidding can be easy to miss because the final destination may be the brand’s legitimate website. An affiliate may target:

• The exact brand name
• Brand + login
• Brand + pricing
• Brand + signup
• Brand + support
• Other high-intent branded searches

The ad may also use messaging that closely resembles the brand’s own search result. For that reason, checking only the final destination URL is not enough. Brands need to examine the complete path:

Search query → Advertiser → Ad copy → Display URL → Final URL → Tracking parameters → Affiliate relationship

Bfore’s research found that a significant share of identified affiliate brand-bidding activity came from Google-verified advertisers. This illustrates that advertiser identity verification and compliance with a particular brand’s affiliate rules are separate issues.

How Can Brands Reduce Affiliate Brand Bidding Abuse?

A combination of clear rules and ongoing monitoring is usually more effective than relying on a single control.

1. Set Clear Rules for Branded Search

Affiliate terms should specify whether affiliates can bid on:

• Brand names
• Trademarked terms
• Product names
• Brand + product combinations
• Common misspellings
• Brand + high-intent terms such as “login” or “pricing”

The program should also clearly explain how violations are handled.

2. Monitor Branded Search Results

Regularly review ads appearing for your brand and important branded search variations.

Useful information to track whether the advertiser is an approved affiliate

includes:

• Search query.
• Advertiser name.
• Ad copy.
• Display URL.
• Final destination.
• Tracking parameters.
• Date and market

For brands with large affiliate programs or broad geographic exposure, automated monitoring can help identify campaigns that manual searches may miss.

3. Review Attribution and Traffic Patterns

A rise in affiliate conversions does not necessarily mean an affiliate generated new demand.

Compare affiliate activity with:

• Branded paid-search traffic
• Organic branded traffic
• Direct traffic
• Affiliate conversion paths
• Changes in branded keyword CPCs

This can help identify whether affiliate activity is generating incremental traffic or competing for users who were already looking for the brand.

4. Enforce Affiliate Program Terms

When activity violates the program agreement, brands can take action according to their established terms. Depending on the agreement, this may involve requesting that ads stop, withholding or reversing commissions where permitted, or ending the affiliate relationship.

5. Use Available Trademark Reporting Options

Trademark protection can also be relevant in certain cases. Google allows trademark owners to submit complaints about specific advertisers when the relevant requirements are met. However, its policy does not restrict trademark use as a keyword by itself; restrictions depend on how the trademark is used in the advertisement and other policy criteria.

This makes trademark reporting one possible response, not a replacement for clear affiliate rules and active monitoring.

Advertising Abuse is Part of a Broader Brand Protection Challenge

Affiliate brand bidding is one type of digital brand abuse. Organizations can also face threats such as phishing, fake websites, fraudulent domains, impersonation, and malicious advertising.

These threats do not all require the same response, but they share a common challenge: identifying unauthorized or harmful use of a brand across the digital ecosystem.

Bfore’s PreCrime™ Defense focuses on identifying malicious infrastructure and online impersonation before attacks become active, including threats involving phishing, fraudulent domains, and digital brand abuse.

Final Thoughts

Affiliate brand bidding is a specific problem at the intersection of affiliate marketing, paid search, and advertising abuse.

The practice is not automatically prohibited simply because an affiliate uses a brand-related keyword. The critical factors are the affiliate program’s rules, the way the advertisement uses the brand, and whether the activity captures branded demand in an unauthorized way.

The practical objective is simple: know who is advertising around your brand, understand where the traffic goes, and identify activity that conflicts with your rules.