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Affiliates bidding on my brand: how to find and stop them

When your own affiliates bid on your brand name, you pay twice for customers who were already looking for you: once in higher brand CPCs, and again in commission. It's one of the most common forms of brand bidding, and one of the easiest to stop, once you can prove who's doing it.

Why affiliates bid on your brand

Brand searches convert better than almost anything else: the searcher already wants you. An affiliate who buys those clicks and sends them to you through their tracking link earns a commission on a sale you would probably have made anyway. Some do it openly; others hide it, running ads only at night, at weekends, in certain cities, or through a redirect so their link isn't obvious.

How to spot affiliate brand bidding

• An ad that looks like yours, but isn't from you. It may show your domain or something close to it, while your own ad is paused or absent in that city.
• Tracking parameters in the ad's link from affiliate networks, such as click IDs from Impact, CJ, ShareASale, Awin, Rakuten or Partnerize.
• Coupon, deal or review sites advertising "brand promo code" or "brand review" and sending clicks straight on to you.
• A redirect chain: the ad goes to another domain first, which immediately forwards to your site with an affiliate code.
• Affiliate sales spike on brand terms while your own brand campaign's impression share drops.

Finding out which affiliate it is

1. Capture the ad and its link, with a dated screenshot, the search, city and device. Don't click it repeatedly; it costs them and can skew your data.
2. Read the tracking code in the link or the redirect. It usually identifies the network and often the partner.
3. Ask your affiliate network to match the tracking ID to the partner. Networks can see this even when you can't.
4. Check the timing against affiliate orders: brand-bid traffic often shows up as orders with very short click-to-buy times.

How to stop it

1. Warn the affiliate with the evidence and a deadline. Use the affiliate letter template.
2. Reverse the commissions on that traffic if your terms allow it, which they should.
3. Remove repeat offenders from the program.
4. Tell your network so they can enforce it across their platform.
5. Keep watching. Removed affiliates sometimes come back under another account or domain.

What to put in your affiliate terms

Make the rule clear and enforceable. Most programs include something like this:

Paid search policy
1. Affiliates may not bid on [Brand], its misspellings, variations or any term containing [Brand], on any search engine or ad platform, alone or combined with other words.
2. Affiliates must add [Brand] and its variations as negative keywords in all paid search campaigns.
3. Affiliates may not use [Brand] in ad text or display URLs, and may not direct link to [brand-domain.com] from paid search ads.
4. Commissions on traffic from prohibited paid search activity will be reversed.
5. Violations may result in removal from the program without notice.

Adapt to your program and have your lawyer review it. If you want to allow some brand bidding (for example, by a few trusted partners), list exactly who and on which terms.

StopBrandBidding.com flags likely affiliates automatically: when an ad's link carries tracking parameters from the major affiliate networks, it's tagged "likely affiliate" in your dashboard, and the takedown pack includes a ready-to-send affiliate email. See also how to stop competitors bidding on your brand.

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