How to Detect Brand Bidding in Your Affiliate Programme

Brand bidding happens when affiliates bid on your brand terms in Google Ads, intercept clicks you would have received anyway, and claim commission for those sales. To detect it, you need to monitor your branded search results, either manually through auction insights and search reports, or automatically using dedicated monitoring tools, which is what we’d always recommend.

This guide covers the detection methods that actually work, the warning signs to watch for, and what to do when you find violators.

Why Brand Bidding Detection Matters

Affiliates bidding on your brand terms costs more than you might think.

According to BforeAI's research examining 605 brands over September-October 2024, 31% of brands were targeted by affiliate brand bidding. On average, brands are targeted by three different advertisers, meaning roughly 18% of affiliates in a typical programme use this technique.

The financial impact is significant. Based on what we see at Marcode, brands typically lose 5-15% of their affiliate commission budget to brand bidding. That's money paid for sales you would have received anyway through organic search or your own paid campaigns.

How to Detect Brand Bidding: 5 Methods

1. Check Your Google Ads Auction Insights

You may be able to spot potential brand bidders is through Auction Insights in Google Ads.

How to do it:
1. Select your branded campaigns or keywords
2. Go to Auction Insights
3. Look for unfamiliar advertisers competing on your brand terms
4. Segment by time period to identify when new competitors appeared

Limitation: Auction Insights shows you who's competing, but not whether they're affiliates. You'll need to investigate further.

2. Run Manual Brand Searches

Search for your brand name (and variations) on Google and note any ads that appear above or alongside your own.

What to look for:
- Ads with your brand name in the headline
- Display URLs containing your brand
- Ads from unfamiliar companies
- Fake discount sites promising codes that don't exist

Limitation: Manual searches only show what's appearing at that moment, in your location. Affiliates often use geo-targeting and dayparting to avoid detection. This is the most common detection method, and the most commonly failed one.

3. Examine Affiliate Tracking URLs

When you click an affiliate's ad, check the full URL chain for tracking parameters.

Red flags:
- `{keyword}` parameters containing your brand name
- Fixed keyword tags matching your brand terms
- Your brand appearing anywhere in the redirect chain

According to The Search Monitor, affiliates often embed keywords into tracking parameters to identify traffic sources. Finding your brand name in these parameters is strong evidence of brand bidding.

4. Monitor Your Brand CPCs

A sudden increase in CPC for branded keywords often signals new competition.

How to track:
- Set up automated alerts for CPC changes above 20%
- Compare week-over-week and month-over-month trends
- Cross-reference spikes with Auction Insights data

5. Use Dedicated Monitoring Tools

For systematic detection, automated tools monitor search results continuously and flag violations.

These tools run searches across locations and times, bypassing the cloaking techniques affiliates use to hide from manual checks. They catch what periodic spot-checks miss.

For more on how affiliate hijacking detection works, see our product pages.

Warning Signs You Have a Brand Bidding Problem

Watch for these indicators:

What We See at Marcode

Based on monitoring affiliate programmes across different verticals, here are the patterns we encounter most often:

The fake discount site pattern

The most common brand bidding we detect involves fake discount sites. Here's how it works: a site like "brandname-coupons.com" bids on your brand + "discount code" or "coupon." When customers click, they land on a page showing expired or non-existent codes. The customer then clicks through to your site via an affiliate link, and the site claims commission.

These sites often enter programmes through subnetworks. The subnetwork is your affiliate, not the individual site, so they slip through because subnetworks rarely enforce brand bidding rules on their publishers. We cover this in more detail on our discount code tracking page.

The "accidental" broad match excuse

When confronted, affiliates frequently claim they didn't know they were bidding on your brand. They blame Google's broad match settings or auto-apply recommendations. Sometimes that's true, Google can add branded terms without explicit approval. But often it's deliberate with plausible deniability built in.

CSS providers

An overlooked source of brand bidding: Comparison Shopping Services (CSS) providers. These are Google Shopping partners who can bid on your brand terms through the Shopping tab. Many brands don't think to check CSS when investigating brand bidding, but it's worth reviewing who's appearing in your Shopping results.

Why manual searches fail

Before using automated monitoring, most brands rely on manual searches. The problem: affiliates use cloaking (showing clean pages when they detect checking behaviour), geo-targeting (only showing ads in certain regions), and dayparting (only running ads at certain times). A spot-check at 2pm from your office IP might show nothing while customers see affiliate ads all day.

How to Respond When You Find Brand Bidding

Once you detect a violation:

Step 1: Document the evidence
- Screenshot the ad
- Record the date, time, and location of the search
- Capture the full URL chain including tracking parameters
- Note the affiliate ID if visible

Step 2: Contact the affiliate
- Reference specific evidence
- Request they add your brand as a negative keyword
- Set a deadline for compliance (typically 24-48 hours)

Step 3: Decide on consequences
- First offence with quick compliance: Warning
- Repeated offence or slow response: Commission suspension
- Deliberate cloaking or deception: Programme removal

Most affiliates who are caught genuinely didn't intend to brand bid—they neglected to add negative keywords. A warning usually resolves it. But those using cloaking or refusing to comply need stronger action.

How to Prevent Future Brand Bidding

Detection is only half the battle. To reduce violations:

1. Update your affiliate terms to explicitly prohibit brand bidding
2. Provide a negative keyword list to all affiliates at onboarding
3. Set up ongoing monitoring rather than periodic spot-checks
4. Communicate consequences clearly in your programme terms

Key Takeaways

• Brand bidding affects 31% of brands and typically wastes 5-15% of affiliate commission budgets
• Manual detection methods miss cloaked, geo-targeted, and dayparted violations
• The most common pattern: fake discount sites entering via subnetworks
• CSS providers are an overlooked source of brand bidding
• Most violations resolve with a warning; persistent violators need stronger action
• Prevention through clear terms and negative keyword lists reduces future violations
  

If affiliate fraud is affecting your programme, Marcode can help detect and stop brand bidding automatically.