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Decoding complex digital challenges like ad fraud, brand safety, brand protection, and ecommerce intelligence for brands to help them advertise fearlessly.

Brand Bidding in Affiliate Marketing

Brand Bidding in Affiliate Marketing: What It Is and Why It’s Riskier in 2025

Blog, Affiliate /

Your brand keywords are your identity. But what if you’re paying higher cost for your brand keywords, or in worst case scenario – paying for your organic traffic.  Brand bidding is a technique used by affiliates and competitors where they bid on your branded keywords to divert your traffic to their landing pages. The impact of brand bidding in affiliate marketing is not just limited to ad budget wastage.   The brands have to pay more for their own branded keywords, they lose search traffic, and revenue drops.   In 2025, it is expected that the expenditure on search advertising will hit $351.5 billion worldwide, indicating a strong growth in the paid search sector. And with the demand for search surges, it is critical for brands to have the right protection against brand bidding violations.    According to our analysis done, we have found that 43% of affiliate traffic is invalid.   This blog is going to unpack:  Why brand bidding protection is critical in 2025?   What Leading Brands Are Doing to Prevent It?    How mFilterIt Protects Your Affiliate Program from Brand Bidding?    Why Brand Bidding Is Riskier in 2025 In 2025, brand bidding has become more than just a compliance problem; it has emerged as a strategic threat. It directly attacks the authenticity of your website, leaving users in a dilemma and baiting them to make the purchase from an affiliate’s website or tracking link. Let’s understand how brand bidding is riskier in 2025:  1. Increased PPC Brand Bidding = Higher CPCs on Brand Terms Affiliates bidding on brand keywords are directly proportional to the cost-per-click. The higher the bidding, the higher the cost-per-click, leading to an increased cost of paid search campaigns, making the visibility achievement on search engines greater challenge.   2. Detection Becoming Harder Due to AI-powered Tool Monitoring the actions of affiliates and enforcing policy violations rules have become tougher for brands as affiliates consistently use cloaking, dynamic redirects, and global targeting by AI to evade detection.  3. Exploitation of Performance Metrics In 2025, brands are relying heavily on performance metrics, prioritizing channels that generate maximum clicks, conversions, and ROAS. Hence, affiliates aim to exploit these metrics by click baiting users and taking credit of the purchases, they made without creating any new demand. This boosts the performance statistics of affiliates through mispresented numbers.  4. Brand Goodwill at Stake Misleading affiliate advertisements, fake discounts, and unreliable affiliate tracking links can severely hamper the goodwill of the brand by eroding customer trust.  Real Impact: How Brand Bidding Eats into Your ROI Your market funnel is at risk; brand bidding is draining your profits. Let’s know how profit leaks are undermining your return on investment (ROI):  1. One Customer, Double Payment If users who are your organic customers, are specifically searching for you, visit an affiliate’s tracking link and make purchases, you lose one organic user and instead pay the affiliate commission on a sale you would have gotten anyway.  2. CPCs Rise Manifold Your PPC campaigns land in a competitive landscape when affiliates bid on your keywords, increasing the cost-per-click and affecting the overall paid search efficiency.  3. False Attribution Affiliates gain commission from selling your products, but no new demand is created. The customers are the same buyers who would have visited your website, anyway, hence creating false attribution.   4. Poor UX = Lost Conversions Misleading or outdated ad copy from affiliates can create confusion, frustration, or distrust — increasing bounce rates and reducing conversion quality.  How to Prevent Brand Bidding: What Leading Brands Are Doing As major talks are going around how to prevent brand bidding in affiliate marketing, brands are also recognizing its importance. The following are the strategies opted by them to tackle the same:  1.Transparent Brand Policies and Contracts Brands create their affiliate program agreements, forbidding affiliates to steal their trademarked terms. The agreement includes what keywords the brand can use; the penalties imposed on the agreement and more.  2. Real-time Monitoring through Automation Brands are keeping a hawk’s eye on violations of their trademarks by affiliates. They monitor the landing pages, ads that appear above their official website and take action accordingly.  3. Negative Keyword Implementation The tactic of negative brand keyword implementation is followed by several brands across the affiliate campaigns to prevent affiliate ads from triggering on brand terms.  4. Timely Audits & Reporting Brands evaluate affiliate traffic through patterns, source, and conversion behaviour to detect and prevent suspicious behavioural patterns. This also includes reviewing landing pages and promo codes to identify any misleading information.  5. Cross-Functional Team Alignment (Legal, PPC, Affiliate Management) Leading brands are bringing legal, PPC, and affiliate teams together to tackle brand bidding in affiliate marketing. Legal handles takedowns, PPC monitors brand keyword activity, and affiliate managers enforce the rules. When these teams work in sync, violations get caught faster and the brand stays protected.  6. Third-party Solution for Detecting Brand Bidding Violation Third-party solution provides unbiased monitoring and detection of brand bidding violations. By offering an external perspective, it ensures transparency, credibility, and consistent protection of a brand’s search presence.  How mFilterIt Protects Your Affiliate Program from Brand Bidding Every click, every booking, every creative asset your brand deserves to own them. Yet brand bidding and unauthorized promotions quietly cause loss of direct traffic, inflate acquisition costs, and dilute trust.  That’s where EffCent steps in, mFilterIt’s affiliate monitoring solution built to protect your performance marketing ROI. But how do we do it? Let’s know now –  Real-time Monitoring –Track brand keyword bidding across ad networks and regions to spot misuse instantly.  Actionable Reporting –Deliver daily reports that highlight brand bidding violations for quick corrective action.  Proprietary Detection –Use Effcent’s technology to precisely identify unauthorized bids on branded keywords.  Restrict Violations –Enable immediate blocking of ad networks bidding on brand terms.   Know how a leading brand utilized mFilterIt’s affiliate monitoring solution to combat brand bidding.  Conclusion Brand bidding is a real threat to your performance, budget, and brand trust. As we

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Festive Season Ad Spend from Mobile Ad Fraud

Marketers’ DIY Guide: Safeguard Your Festive Season Ad Spend from Mobile Ad Fraud

Blog, Mobile Ad Fraud /

The festive season in India is like a high-stakes battleground for consumer attention, and in 2025 the stakes are even bigger.  This year, brands are using all possible strategies with irresistible festive offers. More than ever, AI-powered tools are being used to personalize campaigns, predict shopping behavior, and create highly targeted festive experiences for consumers.  Recent reports reveal that digital ad spends are expected to shoot up by 15–25% this year. That’s over ₹60,000 crore expected to be invested (nearly half of the industry’s yearly budget) into the ecosystem in just a few weeks – Dussehra to New Year.  Moreover, shoppers are equally excited. 80% of brands plan to increase their festive budget compared to last year, and most of that action will happen on mobile-first platforms.  This is the golden time of the year for performance marketers to scale their app performance, boost customer acquisition, and maximize ROI.   However, scaling business growth through mobile advertising campaigns during the festive season is not as simple as it might sound. While brands prepare to shine, fraudsters prepare too – to drain festive ad budgets with fake installs, bot-driven clicks, click flooding tactics, event spoofing, etc.   And during high-stakes periods, when the competition is even more fierce, even a small leakage can snowball into lost sales and damaged ROI.  So, how do you make sure the glowing numbers on your dashboard aren’t just smoke and mirrors? The answer is – by detecting and preventing mobile ad fraud this festive season before it hits your bottom line.   TL; DR, what to expect from this article:  Why mobile ad fraud spikes during the festive season?  A hands-on checklist to spot and block mobile ad fraud  The risks of ignoring fraud during festive season  How an ad fraud detection solution helps protect performance campaigns?  Why Mobile Ad Fraud Peaks During Festive Season?  During festive seasons, whether it’s Diwali in India, Ramadan in the Middle East, or Black Friday across global markets, brands significantly increase their marketing investments. And fraudsters follow the money, waiting for chances like these. Moreover, affiliates and media partners also compete aggressively to deliver results in volume. This creates a perfect storm for sophisticated fraud tactics to slip through traditional ways of ad fraud detection.  Here’s why fraud peaks during festive campaigns:  1. Festive budgets attract fraudsters When brands increase ad spends during the season, fraudsters see it as the perfect opportunity to grab a bigger portion of ad budgets as compared to normal days.  2. Traffic volumes overload systems With millions of clicks and installs happening in a short span, it becomes tougher to spot which ones are real and which ones are fake without the right app fraud detection strategy in place.  3. Pressure to deliver numbers Affiliates and media partners often push for higher volumes to deliver results on a faster and larger scale often using various methods, which means fraudulent traffic can slip through unchecked.  4.Short and intense campaign timelines  Festive campaigns usually run for a few weeks. In the rush to maximize results quickly, marketers don’t always get the time to investigate suspicious activity.  5. Shoppers are more active on mobiles Since most festive shopping now happens on mobile, fraudsters use fake devices, bots, and emulators to mimic real user activity, making fraud harder to catch. The Cost of Ignoring Mobile Ad Fraud During High-stakes Periods like Festive Season Ignoring these red flags can be disastrous for brands running mobile advertising campaigns:  Fraudulent traffic consumes budgets that should be driving real festive conversions.  Customer acquisition costs also spike as fake installs get counted.  Fraud makes campaigns look successful when in reality, genuine reach is limited.  Every dollar wasted on fake users is one less spent reaching real shoppers.  Poor campaign performance badly on brands and damages affiliate trust.  Festive campaigns have short windows, meaning there’s little room for error. But by the time mobile ad fraud is detected, the damage is already done.  The DIY Festive Season Mobile Ad Fraud Detection Checklist for Marketers  While recognizing sophisticated levels of mobile ad fraud requires an advanced AI-ML-based ad fraud detection solution to be in place, many patterns of fraudulent activities can be identified using simple observation.   This DIY checklist is made specifically for marketers to address mobile app fraud, affiliate fraud, and what to watch for:  1. Unusual Click-to-Install Time (CTIT) Patterns Fraudsters flood fake clicks to hijack credit for real installs, distorting CTIT and attribution data, making affiliates look like they are delivering genuine users.  Festive Relevance:  High install surges make fake CTIT timings harder to spot.  Affiliates stuff clicks before festive installs to claim credit.  What to Watch For:  Installs happening too fast (<10 seconds) often indicate bot-driven installs.  Installs delayed too long (>24 hours) indicate click flooding.  CTI < 0.1% likely indicates click spamming.   2. Abnormal Post-Install Behavior  Fraudulent or fake installs may look valid at first but fail to deliver meaningful engagement or purchases post-install, inflating top-of-funnel numbers while draining budgets.  Festive Relevance:  Real festive shoppers browse more, add to cart, and purchase.  Fraudsters simulate installs or spoof in-app events only to claim payouts.  What to Watch For:  High installs with shallow sessions or instant exits.  Zero meaningful actions like adds-to-cart or purchases.  3. Click Injection and Click Spamming  Fraudsters generate fake clicks just before a user installs your app organically, stealing credit from genuine traffic.  Festive Relevance:  With installs surging, fraudsters have more organic actions to hijack.  Affiliates exploit festive urgency to push suspicious click activity.  What to Watch For:  Affiliates with sudden spikes in attributed installs.  Install timelines overlapping heavily with organic traffic.  4. Device Farms and Emulator Traffic Large-scale device farms and emulators simulate fake installs and user activity, tricking attribution systems into marking them as conversions.  Festive Relevance:  Higher festive payouts make device farms highly profitable.  Thousands of fake users can be generated overnight.  What to Watch For:  Repeated installs from identical OS versions or device models.  High device reset rates from the same source.  5. Geo-Mismatch and Proxy

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Lead Landing Page Optimisation

Lead Landing Page Optimization – How to Spot Bots and Improve Lead Quality

Blog, Ad Fraud /

The USA digital advertising industry significantly relies on lead generation strategies. For advertisers in the USA, landing pages are the backbone of their ad campaigns. Millions are spent each year on ads to drive traffic and capture user attention.   But traffic is not always equal to opportunity. Marketers often notice unsettling patterns – even when dashboards show high volume of engagement and ad traffic, clicks, and form fills, somewhere conversions still lag behind.  Why is this happening?  The issue lies in the quality of traffic. Even the most beautifully designed, highly optimized landing page doesn’t convert if the people (or bots) visiting it were never real prospects in the first place.  Bots, click farms, and fraudulent traffic infiltrate digital ad ecosystems and degrade the lead quality, leaving advertisers with misleading reports and empty pipelines.  This not only leads to wasted ad spend but also performance inefficiencies across campaigns.   To overcome this challenge, improve landing page traffic quality and lead quality, brands need to rethink their landing page optimization strategies. Landing page optimization is no longer just about design, CTAs, or A/B testing; it is also about ad traffic validation and lead validation.  In this article, we will talk about:  What is lead landing page optimization?  The hidden threat brands in the USA need to be aware of.  How can advertisers spot bot patterns themselves?  Need for behavior analysis in landing page optimization – some practical steps to implement this  How an ad traffic validation and lead validation solution helps?  What is Lead Landing Page Optimization? Landing page optimization refers to the process of improving key elements of a landing page, such as design, messaging, and user experience to maximize conversions. A good landing page has a clear headline, persuasive copy, an easy-to-find call-to-action, and a layout that minimizes friction. All these steps help maximize conversion opportunities. But only if the traffic is real.  Advertisers often track clicks, form submissions, and engagement to guide optimizations. But bots quietly pollute the funnel, making A/B tests, bounce rates, and conversion data unreliable. This leads brands to optimize for noise while neglecting real buyers.  To break this loop, landing page strategies must go beyond surface-level optimizations. Incorporating behavioral analysis (like unusual browsing patterns or abnormal session times) and web fraud monitoring ensures traffic quality, helping brands achieve meaningful results and stronger ROI.   The Hidden Threat: How Bot Traffic Pollutes Lead Generation Campaigns Bot traffic is one of the most damaging but often overlooked issues in digital advertising. In the USA, where ad spend is among the highest globally, bots exploit every opportunity, from fake clicks to automated lead form submissions. Moreover, these aren’t just spam bots; fraudsters now use sophisticated bots that mimic real human behavior and are harder to detect.  Pay-per-call campaigns are also a widely used lead generation method in the USA. However, instead of connecting advertisers with genuine prospects, fraudsters generate fake or automated calls to trigger payouts. This not only wastes budgets but also distorts campaign performance data, leaving marketers with no real customer engagement to build on.  Further, the impact is severe.   Bots fill out lead forms with junk data, leaving sales teams chasing contacts that never convert.  Fraudulent submissions make campaigns appear cheaper per lead, masking the true cost of acquiring real prospects.  Inflated lead volumes give a false sense of demand, making it harder for marketers to forecast and allocate budgets effectively.  With CRMs overloaded by bot-generated entries, genuine leads get neglected, reducing the chances of meaningful customer acquisition.  Landing pages and ad creatives end up being optimized for fraudulent behavior instead of genuine prospects.  And when businesses base optimization decisions on false signals, it directly leads to long-term ROI damage.   That is why validating ad traffic based on various behavioral signals and parameters is no longer optional; it’s a core part of the landing page optimization strategy to combat web fraud.  DIY Guide: How Advertisers Can Spot Bot Patterns Themselves While recognizing sophisticated bot behavior requires an advanced AI-ML-based ad fraud detection solution to be in place, many patterns of fraudulent activities can be uncovered using simple observation and existing analytics platforms. Advertisers and marketers in the USA can start by monitoring:  Abnormal session duration: Bots often leave instantly, resulting in high bounce rates.   Repeated form fills: Look for duplicate names, fake emails, or strangely perfect data entries.  Analyze unnatural browsing patterns or scroll behavior: Real users skim unevenly; bots scroll mechanically, or not at all.  Watch clicks patterns: Bots click too quickly, with no hesitation or natural flow.  Unusual geographies/devices: Leads showing up from regions or devices outside your campaign targeting also indicates bot activity.  Traffic spikes at odd hours: Sudden bursts of activity at 2 AM followed by dead ends or zero follow-ups.  Junk conversion: High volume of form submissions, but emails bounce or calls go unanswered.  Bot registrants and junk leads: CRMs filled with incomplete profiles, disposable email IDs, or leads that never respond waste sales resources.  These DIY checks act as early warning signs against bot traffic. This helps advertisers identify suspicious patterns before optimizing landing pages.  Why Behavior Analysis Complements Landing Page Optimization When advertisers only optimize design and messaging of a landing page, they improve the chances that a visitor will take action. On the other hand, behavior analysis acts as the missing piece in the landing page optimization process.  Behavior analysis helps track how users move, click, and engage with a landing page or an ad, separating real prospects from fake ones.  By monitoring signals like irregular mouse movements, abnormal session durations, repeated form submissions, or patterns that don’t match natural human interaction, advertisers can separate genuine prospects from fraudulent traffic in real time.  As a result, this not only helps improve campaign efficiency but also improves lead quality. Sales teams receive fewer junk leads, reducing wasted effort. Marketers can make smarter budget allocation decisions when they’re working with clean data instead of bot-inflated numbers. Ultimately, it protects ROI by ensuring that every dollar spent is directed toward

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Managing Ads Across Multiple Ecommerce Marketplaces

How a Unified Platform Cuts Hidden Costs of Ads Across Ecommerce Marketplaces

Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics /

Aditya was running a festive campaign for his brand on top eCommerce marketplaces and quick commerce platforms. He sets the bid for a specific keyword, schedules the campaigns, and goes to sleep.  Meanwhile, their competitors reduce the bid cost and get a better position than them. Till the time he sees that and optimizes his campaigns, his competitors have captured the eyeballs.  And in addition to it, he is struggling to keep an eye on all the platforms at the same time.   During peak season time, brands cannot take the risk of losing visibility. But managing cross-platform campaigns manually is like floating on two boats like Aditya. Your human eye will definitely miss something.   This is the hidden cost of managing ads across multiple marketplaces separately.  So, now the question is – How should a performance manager manage ads across Amazon, Flipkart, Blinkit, and others without logging into 5 different dashboards?  Let’s find that out.  In this article, we will talk about:  The inefficiencies of managing ads manually across different platforms.   Why manual campaign creation, monitoring, and reporting are no longer enough in today’s competitive landscape.  How a unified ad manager simplifies complexity by bringing everything into one dashboard.  The role of AI and automation in making ad management smarter, faster, and more efficient.  The Hidden Inefficiencies of Managing Cross-Platform Campaigns Manually Every ecommerce marketplace has its own advertising platform with unique dashboards and reporting methods. Handling 2-3 campaigns across these ad managers might seem like a manageable task. But as the number of your campaigns grows and with increased competition, the manual efforts become inefficient. And the cracks begin to show:  Time drain: Constantly switching between platforms to check performance and make optimizations wastes hours that can be spent on strategy.  Data silos: It gets difficult to get a clear, unified picture of overall marketing spend and ROI, with insights locked inside separate dashboards.  Slow response times: Marketplaces are dynamic. Bids change, competitors adjust pricing, and inventory fluctuates quickly. Relying on manual monitoring means you’re often reacting too late.  Higher risk of errors: Fragmented management increases the chances of overspending, duplicate targeting, or misaligned campaigns, all of which directly impact profitability.  Reporting headaches: Each platform has its own format and metrics. Creating consolidated reports means extra manual work, often leading to inconsistencies or overlooked insights.  Missed growth opportunities: When campaigns are managed in isolation, you can’t easily see cross-market patterns, like whether Amazon campaigns are outperforming Flipkart, or if a product trending on Blinkit could be pushed more on other platforms.  Guesswork in bid adjustments: Without consolidated insights, marketers often rely on trial-and-error when setting bids. This guesswork leads to overspending in some areas while underfunding campaigns that could actually deliver better results.  Therefore, manual ad campaign management methods fail to keep up with the speed, complexity, and interconnectedness of the rapidly growing ecommerce space. Advertisers now need to move towards a smarter, unified system that not only tracks campaigns across platforms but also provides real-time, actionable ecommerce analytics as well as saves optimization time using AI and automation.  What is a Unified Ad Manager? A Unified Ad Manager is a single platform that allows brands to create, manage, monitor, and optimize their advertising campaigns across multiple ecommerce marketplaces and digital channels from one place. Instead of juggling Amazon, Flipkart, Blinkit, Myntra, or other platforms separately, a unified marketing platform consolidates all campaign data into a centralized dashboard.  This unified approach removes the need to switch between multiple dashboards, download endless reports, or manually reconcile metrics. Brands get advanced ecommerce analytics, a standardized view of ad spend, ROI, keyword performance, and campaign results across platforms, all in one single dashboard.  Benefits of Using a Unified Ad Manager 1. Centralized Campaign Management: Create, manage, and optimize campaigns for multiple marketplaces from one dashboard. This eliminates the need to switch between platforms, saving time and reducing complexity.  2. Smarter Campaign Creation Set up campaigns faster using data-driven insights on budgets, products, and keywords. Bulk campaign creation ensures consistency across platforms while tailoring strategies for individual marketplaces.  3. Real-Time Campaign Modifications Adjust budgets, bids, keywords, and product codes in one place. Updates reflect instantly across platforms, and bulk optimization at once makes scaling effortless.  4. Optimization & Bid Management Improve performance with dynamic bid adjustments, budget reallocations, and automated dayparting. The platform even auto-pauses campaigns for out-of-stock products, ensuring ad spend isn’t wasted.  5. AI-Powered Rule Engine Use of AI-based ecommerce analytics helps apply smart rules to optimize campaigns automatically. From adjusting bids to reallocating budgets, AI triggers ensure campaigns remain competitive without constant manual oversight.  6. Integrated Digital Shelf Analytics Track keyword share of search, monitor category visibility, and measure competitor rankings. This integration bridges ad performance with digital shelf presence for a complete view.  7. Budget Management & Pacing Spreads ad spends across peak hours with automated pacing. The platform also provides instant alerts on low balances and intelligently shuffles budgets for maximum efficiency.  8. Deep Insights & Reporting Access a global Power BI dashboard with detailed insights on platform, brand, keyword, or product. This includes availability, ratings and reviews, and share-of-search, making decisions more data-driven.  9. Transparency Through Logs Every change, from bid updates to rule executions, is tracked in an activity log. This provides clarity, accountability, and a clear audit trail.  10. Better Outcomes at Scale By simplifying ad management, reducing manual effort, and applying automation, brands achieve higher ROAS, fewer errors, and continuous performance improvement.  How AI & Automation Help in Advanced Ad Campaign Management Unified ad manager solves the problem of fragmentation, but by leveraging AI-based ecommerce analytics, brands can move beyond visibility. AI brings the power of automation to everyday ad campaign management. Here’s how:  Smart budget allocation: Instead of manually deciding how much to spend on each marketplace, AI shifts budgets toward platforms and campaigns based on real time competitor insights delivering the best ROI.  Automated bid adjustments: Bids update in real-time to stay competitive, saving you from hours of manual tweaks. 

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rise-in-brand-infringement-scams

Rise in Brand Infringement: How Brands Can Stay Protected This Festive Season

Blog, Brand Protection /

It’s the busiest time of the year… Especially for ecommerce brands, when shoppers are eagerly browsing, ready to shop, spend, and convert. And at this moment, the buzz has already begun, users have already started wishlisting what new products they need to bring home this festive season. Brands are all geared up to make the most from festive sales like Flipkart’s Big Billion Days, Amazon’s Great Indian Festival, Meesho’s Mega Blockbuster Sale, etc. But are you aware, it’s the most wonderful time of the year for whom? Fraudsters and scammers. E-commerce brands are highly targeted by fraudsters during the festive season. mFilterIt spotted more than 1600 suspicious domains and fake websites appearing on ad networks mimicking known e-commerce platforms, dedicated to phishing and selling counterfeits. This is just one part of the bigger problem. Festive season fraud in India has evolved far beyond the occasional fake product listing. Today, cybercriminals run full-fledged operations, registering lookalike domains, cloning brand websites, impersonating customer service representatives, and creating social media ads that look almost indistinguishable from those of the real brands. Around 45% of Indian consumers report that they or someone they know has been targeted by a deepfake-based shopping scam, and over half of these victims, about 56%, ended up losing money to the fraud. Source: Times of India. So, how do brands ensure protection against brand infringement scams to safeguard their integrity in the market and among consumers? In this article, we’ll break down types of brand infringements targeting Indian consumers during the festive season and explore how both shoppers and businesses can protect themselves. We’ll also look at how brand protection solutions help e-commerce platforms keep the festive spirit safe. Why Festive Season Is Prime Time for Scammers? A report by the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) found that phishing and brand impersonation attacks spike by up to 70% during peak shopping seasons. This means that when customers are highly energetic, lured, and distracted by discounts, fraudsters are busy making their fraudulent operations look more legitimate than ever. Here’s why the number of scams surges during this time of the year:  Shoppers are in a hurry – Limited-time deals, flash sales, and midnight offers push customers to act fast. This urgency often means they skip basic checks like verifying seller authenticity or double-checking website URLs.  Massive ad spend boosts brand visibility – Brands invest heavily in festive marketing across channels. Fraudsters hijack this visibility by copying creatives, mimicking landing pages, and targeting the same ad keywords to divert traffic.  Fear of missing out drives impulsive clicks – Festive campaigns create a “buy now before it’s gone” mindset. Fraudsters exploit this by using phishing sites, listings, and even emails that look identical to official ones, banking on consumers’ lack of attention.  Customers’ trust in brands – Customers expect big discounts during festivals like Diwali, Independence Day, etc., from the brands they know they can trust. This high trust level lowers their skepticism toward unusually cheap offers, making it easier for scammers to mislead them.  Volume of activity makes monitoring harder – With brands handling high order volumes, launching new SKUs, and running multiple campaigns, it becomes harder to track every marketplace listing, social ad, or new domain in real time, giving scammers a window to operate.  Therefore, the lack of vigilance from both brands’ and consumers’ results in an increase of brand infringement cases and lost brand integrity, sales, as well as customer trust.  Common Types of Brand Infringement Attacks You Need to Know About Several brand infringement patterns repeatedly surface during festive sales. Below are some things you need to be aware of:  1. Fake Websites, Typo Squatting, and Lookalike Domains Fraudsters register domains that closely mimic brand URLs (swap letters like replacing ‘O’ with a ‘zero’, add prefixes/suffixes, use similar TLDs) and build landing pages that copy official branding, logo, and product images. These pages are then promoted by running fake ads across platforms, SMS links, or mass phishing campaigns promising 50-70% discounts. So, customers land on convincing checkout pages and complete payments that never reach the real brand.  2. Counterfeit and Unauthorized Marketplace Listings Unauthorized sellers list fake or low-quality replicas of legit products under a genuine brand name. These listings often come with heavily discounted prices to lure buyers who end up buying substandard goods, leading to a poor experience and loss of money.  According to a joint study conducted by Crisil and the Authentication Solution Providers Association (ASPA), counterfeit goods account for roughly 25–30% of total products sold in India. The problem is particularly severe in the apparel and FMCG industries, where counterfeit selling reaches about 31% and 28%, respectively. Source: Business Standard 3. Social Media Impersonation and Fake Promotional Accounts Fake Instagram pages, cloned Facebook profiles, or fake WhatsApp customer service numbers are commonly used to run festive promotions. Scammers create accounts that visually mimic the brand, run paid ads, or DM followers with limited-time coupon codes that lead to phishing websites or fake storefronts. This not only steals immediate sales from the brand but also floods their original account with angry customers requiring PR and customer-care bandwidth to resolve issues and re-establish trust.  According to research conducted in 2024, 31% of consumers admitted that they are likely to purchase from sellers discovered on social media if the offer seems appealing, leaving them particularly vulnerable to brand impersonation fraud. Moreover, nearly 47% of Indian consumers have encountered scams involving forged celebrity endorsements or questionable online retailers on social media platforms. Source: McAfee  How Brand Infringement Scams Hurt Consumers and Brands: The Ripple Effect The first and most direct victims of brand impersonation attacks are consumers. The festive season makes shoppers even more vulnerable. Major impacts include:  Financial losses – Customers end up paying for products that are never delivered, or receive counterfeit goods of little or no value. Refunds are rarely possible because scammers disappear once the transaction is complete.  Compromised personal data – Fake websites and phishing campaigns collect sensitive information such as credit card numbers, addresses, and login credentials. This

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