How to Block Affiliate Fraud AbuseHow to Block Affiliate Fraud Abuse
If an affiliate is engaging in unethical activities that violate your program’s terms of service, it is important to block their abuse immediately. This will prevent the scammer from continuing their fraudulent clicks and conversions while ensuring that honest affiliates continue to receive the commissions they deserve.
Best ways to prevent lead gen fraud of abuse is domain spoofing. Fraudsters will purchase ads with a disposable URL that they will discard after the user visits the ad. This technique allows fraudsters to hide their affiliate ID from merchants and other marketers looking for trademark violations by obscuring it with different types of obfuscation.
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Another common form of abuse is cookie stuffing. This involves loading modified cookies on users’ browsers in order to misattribute a transaction to the defrauding affiliate. This can result in fake clicks and fraudulent conversions that waste the merchant’s ad spend on paid search and affiliate campaigns.
To combat these tactics, you can implement more stringent policies during the affiliate application process and enforce them strictly once an affiliate joins your program. You can also use tools like Brandverity to monitor your affiliates for paid search and trademark violations.
Lastly, you should interview every new affiliate that joins your program to ensure they understand your expectations and are willing to adhere to your strict terms of service. This will prevent many of these abusive users from joining your program in the first place.
Detecting and stopping performance marketing abuse is not an easy task, but it’s possible with the right software. If you discover suspicious activity, make sure to document the evidence and issue a violation warning to the affiliate. If the affiliate is not able to clean up their act, you should remove them from your program immediately.…