Ad hijacking is a tricky and harmful practice where people who shouldn’t be doing it, like affiliates, competitors, or malicious people, run ads using your brand’s name or keywords without permission.
These hijackers want to redirect visitors, steal your sales, and change search engine results to benefit themselves, often without you knowing. This type of interference hurts your paid ads by making each click more expensive, messing up your performance data, and damaging customer trust.
For brands spending a lot on online marketing, especially in ads on search engines, there are serious finance and reputation risks. To make things worse, hijackers usually work in secret or areas that are hard to reach, which makes it tough to find them.
It’s important to know how ad hijacking happens and how to spot and stop it. This helps keep your advertising safe, ensures good relationships with partners, and protects your brand’s online image. In this post, we’ll explain the main dangers of ad hijacking, how to notice the warning signs, and how to protect your business.
What is Ad Hijacking?
Ad hijacking occurs when unapproved people copy your paid ads, often exactly, and send visitors who meant to find you to their own websites instead. These dishonest people usually bid on your brand’s keywords, tricking users into thinking they are clicking on your ad when they really aren’t.
The most annoying thing about hijacking is that it usually happens without anyone noticing. Your numbers might seem okay at first, but actually, you’re missing out on clicks and sales. So, who is making these similar ads and what do they gain from it? Let’s take a closer look at the usual people involved.
Who is Responsible for Ad Hijacking?
Affiliate partners often take over ads in a way that isn’t allowed, making up about 75% of the problem. Some companies advertise properly, but others buy ads using your brand name, copy your ads, and make money from the traffic that you should be getting instead of bringing in new customers.
Sometimes, rivals are responsible for the hijack, purposefully stealing traffic to get an advantage. Sometimes, ad hijacking happens by accident because of dynamic keyword insertion.
This is when a competitor pays for ads using your brand name, and the ad system automatically puts in their headlines. This might accidentally include your brand name in the ads.
Why do they do it? Because it works, until they are discovered. It’s an easy way to get money back from your advertising, but it can often cost you. Now that you know who is responsible, let’s see how ad hijacking really happens.
How Does Ad Hijacking Happen?
Ad hijacking happens when someone, often an affiliate, places a bid on keywords that are related to your brand. They copy your ad so well that it looks almost exactly the same as the original.
When a user clicks on the stolen ad, they are taken to a website run by the person who took over the ad. That website might send visitors back to your site to earn money from you, or it could send them to a different offer or competitor.
Why is it Difficult to Notice Ad Hijacking?
Ad hijacking is a trick that is meant to be misleading. Hijackers often use location targeting to restrict who sees their fake ads. So, you might not see these ads unless you are searching from a certain place.
They change their advertising campaigns, run ads at unusual times, or hide what they’re really doing by showing different things to customers and to brand monitors. For most people, there isn’t any clear warning sign.
The ad looks similar to ones you’ve seen before, and the website it leads to might be yours, but it comes through a different link. Advertisers can’t keep track of every ad view or every offer they make. And that’s why hijackers succeed.
How Ad Hijacking Affects Your Brand?
Higher Cost Per Click
When hijackers try to buy your brand’s keywords, they increase the auction price. Even if you win the auction, you end up paying more for each click because you’re trying to compete with others who are using your brand’s name unfairly. These high costs can add up quickly, especially in large advertising campaigns.
These higher costs don’t just impact short-term budgets; they also disturb planning and efficiency in the long run. When your brand has to compete for its own keywords, it takes money away from getting new customers or growing other areas.
Over time, this makes it seem like you need to spend more money on ads, pushing you to keep offering higher bids than competitors who aren’t allowed to compete. Also, you may need to watch your progress more closely and spend extra money on running your campaigns to keep up with the competition.
The worst part is that you’re spending more money to protect what you already own, while the people stealing from you get to use your brand’s value without doing any work or spending their own money.
Stolen Conversions
Competitors or affiliates might say they helped make sales that your website would have made on its own. You lose track of where customers came from, and in affiliate situations, some tricky links might send people to an affiliate’s checkout page. This means that the commissions could go to those affiliates instead of going to you.
This trick doesn’t just take your money; it also changes how you see what customers do. When hijackers disrupt transactions, they interrupt the link between clicking and buying, making it difficult to see what really motivates customers to take action.
In affiliate programs, this can make dishonest partners look better than they really are, taking money and recognition away from trustworthy and successful affiliates. Your data gets worse too, things like where your traffic comes from and how people move through your sales process become less accurate.
As time goes on, you might make choices that lead you in the wrong direction or stop funding areas that are really doing well, all because some people are messing with the data.
Lead Leakage
When stolen ads send people to low-quality websites, it becomes difficult to keep track of the leads, and they end up being lost. You will miss out on money, and it will be very hard to see how well your campaign is doing.
Once leads are lost like this, it’s very hard to get them back. Hijacked traffic usually goes to low-quality or confusing pages that don’t match your brand’s style, message, or what you’re offering.
Users might get confused or frustrated, which can lead them to leave or choose other options instead. Even worse, some of this information could be taken by data sellers or bad people, which could harm both your brand and the customer.
The more this occurs, the tougher it gets to see how well the campaign is really doing. You might see missing parts in your sales process and differences in where your leads come from. This shows that someone else is messing with how your customers find you.
Harmed Brand Image
Hacked ads can lead people to fake, unrelated, or even scammy deals. If something goes wrong, users won’t blame the person who took over; they’ll blame you. Trust and credibility can suffer, even if you didn’t approve the ad.
How the customer sees things is very important, and once that image is hurt, it’s hard to fix. People want to see the same quality when they interact with your brand online. If they come across unclear websites or misleading deals that pretend to be from you, they start to lose trust.
These bad experiences can spread quickly on social media and review sites, where people are quick to share their dissatisfaction. Even a few events can stick in their mind for a long time.
Even worse, if these ads take personal information or trick people, your brand could have a bad reputation or face legal issues, even if you didn’t do anything wrong. Protecting a brand’s reputation involves taking action early to prevent problems from getting worse.
Performance Pollution
Ad hijacking messes up your campaign information, affecting important metrics like click-through rate and return on ad spend, and giving incorrect credit for conversions. This makes it hard to improve performance because you’re making choices based on incorrect information.
When your campaign data is messed up by hijackers, it becomes harder for you to improve it. You might think a keyword isn’t working well and stop using it, but actually, someone else has taken control of it.
You might spend more money on a campaign that seems more successful because of fake results. This performance pollution impacts everything from testing different options to making bigger decisions.
Over time, all your marketing tools, from ad platforms to analytics dashboards, get messy with unnecessary information. You can’t make good decisions based on data if the data isn’t clean. You’re basically guessing and wasting money, which makes your campaign less effective.
Also Read: A Step-by-Step Framework for Crafting Winning Display Ad Designs
How to Identify Ad Hijacking?
Ad hijacking tricks can be sneaky, making them hard to notice until it’s too late. Also, you should watch out for two kinds of hijacking: affiliate and competitor. Competitor hijacking happens when your competitors bid on the same keywords as you.
Affiliate hijacking is when business people use special links to show products or services on their website, hoping to make money from commissions. Depending on what you sell or what kind of business you’re in, this could really help boost your marketing.
A simple way to do this is to enter brand names into the search bar of the ad platform. No matter what kind of hijacking you’re dealing with, here are some proven ways to reveal it and stop it before it harms your campaigns.
Do Regular Audits for SERP and Ad Copy
Look up your brand’s keywords yourself and check out the ads that show up. Search for copies that are the same or very similar to yours. If something seems wrong, especially if it connects to a different website, it could be a possible hijack.
Tools like Meta’s Ad Library help you easily check and review ads. You can easily find any ads related to your brand or other keywords, and identify any unwanted or fake campaigns.
This type of regular checking helps you find people who run ads at odd times or focus on certain places. Try using incognito mode or a VPN to see how different users experience things.
Also, take screenshots of anything suspicious and note the time, you might need this later to ask for takedown requests. As time goes on, you will begin to see trends in how and when the hijacking takes place.
If the same websites or types of text keep showing up, it probably means there is ongoing misuse. The more often you check things, the quicker you can respond, which helps you lower damage and save money.
Use Tracking Tools
Websites like Adthena, BrandVerity, and The Search Monitor focus on finding ads that shouldn’t be there. These tools search results pages in different locations and time zones, finding duplicate ads that you might not notice if you checked by hand. They also help keep track of violations and make records.
These platforms not only find violations but also help you prove that it’s happening. You receive clear reports that tell you when and where an ad showed up, what it looked like, and where it directed people.
This is really helpful when working with advertising platforms or legal teams to get rid of bad users. Also, many tools let you set up alerts to keep track of things as they happen. This means that if someone begins running a stolen advertisement at 3 AM in a different country, you will still get an alert.
Look Out for Unusual Performance Issues
Sudden drops in sales, unusually high costs per click, or unexpected changes in affiliate traffic might mean that someone is stealing your clicks. If things go bad and you don’t know why, look into it more.
You might notice the effects of ad hijacking in your data before you see the ads themselves. A decrease in conversion rate might not mean your ads are not good, it could just be that people did not visit your website.
Keep a close eye on brand campaigns, especially if you see unexpected changes in how much money you’re getting back. Look for patterns based on time, are results going down at certain times of day or in specific areas?
Use this information along with search engine results checks or tracking tools to verify your findings. Staying aware of these signs helps you act fast, so hijackers don’t harm your funnel for a long time.
Analyze Patterns in Affiliate Conversion
If you work with affiliate partners, keep track of who is making sales, where they are coming from, and how the sales happen. Strange jumps in activity in one area, quick rises in brand keyword sales, or unexpected boosts in affiliate earnings might all mean that someone is stealing or taking over traffic.
Unexpected increases in sales from brand keywords or unusually high earnings for specific partners might indicate that someone is taking advantage of your brand. Check the attribution data.
If it changes suddenly and points to one source without a related campaign or project, look into it more. It’s good to keep an eye on landing page links and where visitors are coming from to spot any signs of cloaking or redirects that aren’t allowed.
Some partners might try to trick you by buying ads for your brand and using hidden websites to steal traffic. Feel free to pause any accounts you think are suspicious while you check them. Regular partner checks along with tech tools can help you keep a healthy and compliant affiliate network.
Set Up Location Testing
Many hijackers target their ads to specific locations to avoid getting caught. If you run campaigns in other countries, use VPNs or outside testing tools to see search results from different places.
Hijackers think that you are only paying attention to your main market. That’s why it’s important to test from different areas. Use VPNs to mimic your searches coming from other countries and see how your brand looks to people there.
Watch for unknown website names or small changes in the ad text that might suggest someone is pretending to be another company. Try testing at different times of the day, especially when businesses are closed.
If you work internationally or have branches in other countries, focus more on those markets. Regional hijacking can happen without anyone noticing for months if it isn’t looked into regularly, which can hurt your reputation in ways you might not expect.
Check Search Impression Share
If you see a decrease in how often your branded keywords are shown, and you haven’t reduced your budget or changed your strategy much, it might mean that someone else is competing strongly for your brand.
A drop in the number of times people see ads for your brand’s keywords, especially when you haven’t changed your budget or what you’re targeting, is a warning sign. Another person might be trying to buy your brand and winning auctions, especially in some areas or on different devices.
Use auction insights to see which competitors are coming into your market. If you notice unfamiliar or not very relevant ads, it’s a good indication that someone may be taking over your account.
Act fast by changing your bids, refining match types, and reporting any violations. Keeping an eye on this number regularly helps you spot problems early and take back control of your brand name before you lose more customers.
Also Read: How To Run Successful PPC Campaign
How to Prevent Ad Hijacking?
Finding ad hijacking is just part of the fight. Once you’ve made sure it’s going to happen, or if you want to prepare early you’ll need a plan with several levels of protection. Here’s how to fix the problems and avoid losing more in the future.
Make Stricter Affiliate Contracts
If you work with affiliate partners, check your contracts right away. Make sure they clearly say that someone can’t bid on brand names or copy their ads. Add words that explain what ad hijacking is and describe what can happen if someone breaks the rules.
You can also add rules that let you end the agreement right away or stop payments if someone is hijacking your ads. Think about including the right to check the traffic sources and keywords that affiliates use whenever you want.
Clearly explain what counts as a violation, for example, not only bidding on brand names but also using similar ads or misleading links. By showing clear rules and examples of actions taken, you help prevent other affiliates from misbehaving.
Set Up Monitoring Tools
Don’t depend on just checking manually. Use PPC tools to find and prevent ad hijacking. Some tools can automatically send alerts and provide templates for requests to remove content, making it quicker and simpler to enforce rules.
Make sure the tools you have can scan specific locations, track different devices, and collect pictures as proof. Set limits or alerts for unusual activity, such as big drops in the number of times your ads are shown, or sudden increases in competitor ads using your brand’s name.
Connect with Slack, email, or your project management tools so notifications get to the team members right away. Don’t just watch things happen, check the logs every week and use what you find to improve how you enforce rules.
These tools can help you save your business by decreasing the chances of hijackers causing harm, especially when used with tracking systems and external audits.
Create a Process for Internal Response
Make a step-by-step plan for what to do when hijacking is found. Who gathers proof? Who reaches out to partners? Who files complaints? The quicker your team works, the less harm your campaigns will face. Make sure to do regular checks, like a monthly review using a monitoring tool or a scan from a third-party.
Keeping a record of the time it takes to find and fix a problem helps prevent delays and misunderstandings. Make sure each step has a person in charge, like legal for takedown notices, marketing for reaching out to affiliates, and paid media for changing campaigns.
Create a main record of hijacking incidents to monitor repeat criminals and results. This database can help you see patterns over time and support bigger enforcement actions if necessary.
Think about making agreements that set standards for how quickly you respond to things. This organized process helps reduce problems and gives leaders confidence that protecting the brand is a serious priority.
Improve Your Campaign Settings
Think about changing the campaign settings to make it harder for someone to take over. This makes sure your ads focus only on the specific words you want to use. You can make your targeting more specific by limiting it to certain locations and devices to stop unwanted ads from foreign affiliates.
Another useful tip is to keep your brand campaigns separate from general ones. This helps you manage and see how well they are doing more easily. Use dayparting to show ads only during times when hijacking is less likely to happen.
Keep an eye on auction insights to find out which domains often show up with your brand’s ads. These could be people trying to take your business or competitors going after your brand.
As time goes by, you’ll notice patterns that help you stop hijackers better. Adjust your campaign and keep a close eye on how often your ad is shown and how many people click on it. This way, you can quickly respond if someone begins to bid against you.
Educate Your Stakeholders and Team
Many paid media teams concentrate so much on performance metrics that they forget about the importance of advertising quality. Hold training sessions that explain what ad hijacking is, how it occurs, and what each team member can do to spot or report it. Make it clear: This isn’t just a traffic problem, it’s about keeping our brand safe.
You can pick a person in each department to watch for signs of hijacking. Teach new team members, especially those working with paid ads or partnerships, the best ways to spot issues during their training.
Share monthly updates on monitoring results to keep everyone informed in the company. When people see how hijacking can hurt their money and reputation, they are more likely to pay attention and react quickly.
Emphasize that keeping things safe is everyone’s job, not just marketers or legal teams. A well-informed team is one of the best ways to protect against current or new dangers.
Use Built-In Safety Features
The websites you use to show your ads can help stop others from stealing them. Google lets you contact a representative or use their support website to report trademark violations.
TikTok is quickly becoming a popular place for ads, and it lets you report trademark problems. Meta has a tool to help protect brands. This is important because hijackers often make many ads on the platform and run them all at once.
This can make it hard to stop each ad. Also, if you manage to stop one ad, they can just make and start a new one. As marketers, we need to look into everything the platforms we use can do.
Since ad hijacking is a common issue, it’s important to understand not just the features and performance of your advertising platforms but also what they can do to help fix problems.
Consider Support from Agency
If your team can’t keep an eye on threats all day and night, think about working with a paid media agency that knows how to manage affiliates and keep your brand safe. Agencies usually have better ways to keep an eye on things, legal help, and plans for taking action.
When picking an agency, ask them how much they know about handling ad fraud and making sure affiliates follow the rules. The best agencies won’t just monitor problems, they’ll actively act against threats, report issues, and help fix your online presence if it has been messed up.
Some agencies also provide contract consulting, helping you improve affiliate agreements to stop problems in the future. Their reporting tools can help you see more clearly how your brand’s keywords are performing on search engines.
How Can Agencies Help?
Ad hijacking is complicated, happens quickly, and can easily be overlooked, especially for teams handling many tasks at once. That’s where agency partners can be really helpful.
Experienced agencies have special tools and knowledge that most in-house teams do not have. They provide tools that let you monitor what’s happening right away and include steps to take action.
This helps you notice and fix hijacking issues before they negatively affect your campaigns. They also keep an eye on partners to make sure they follow the rules and quickly identify any bad behavior.
If action is needed, agencies usually have legal help or quick contacts with ad platforms, which can make it faster to remove ads. It’s also important for agencies to take initiative. They check campaigns often, look at how well branded keywords are doing, and help create long-term strategies to protect your business goals.
When you team up with a strategic partner, you’re not just fixing issues; you’re stopping them from happening. Having that kind of insight can make the difference between wasting money on ads and making a profit from them.
If you haven’t noticed ad hijacking before, it’s important to think about whether you have the right tools and enough time to spot it before it becomes more expensive for you.
Final Thoughts
Ad hijacking is a big and often hidden risk to how well your brand does online. High advertising costs, lost sales, and missed opportunities can affect your whole marketing plan.
Besides losing money, it breaks trust, both with your customers and your team members who depend on accurate data to make good choices. Luckily, if you pay attention, check your search results often, use tracking tools, and watch your affiliate and campaign activities closely, you can spot and reduce hijacking before it gets worse.
As online ads get more competitive, protecting your brand’s visibility and website traffic is no longer just a good idea; it’s essential. Using a mix of hands-on checks, location tests, and performance reviews will help keep your ad space clean.
Keep in mind that keeping your brand safe online is not something you do just once. It’s a continuous job that can lead to better returns on investment, stronger partnerships, and lasting trust in your brand.
FAQs
Who mostly does ad hijacking?
The most common ad hijackers are dishonest affiliates, competitors, or outside marketers trying to take advantage of your brand’s visitors for their gain. In affiliate marketing, some untrustworthy partners might use your brand name to attract visitors and send them through their links. Competitors might try to trick people, get ahead of your ads, or hurt your brand. Hijackers usually work secretly, focusing on certain areas, devices, or times, which makes them hard to find without the proper tools.
How can I know if someone is hijacking my ads?
Keep an eye on unexpected changes in your performance numbers, like increasing costs per click, decreasing conversion rates, or strange behavior from affiliates. Look up your brand’s keywords and check out the ads that appear. If you see an ad that looks like yours or links to different websites, it might mean someone is trying to steal your idea. Tools like BrandVerity and Adthena, or checking search results manually with VPNs, can help you find ads that are using your brand without permission.
Can affiliates be held accountable for hijacking ads?
Yes, dishonest affiliates are usually the ones who hijack ads. They bid on your brand’s keywords and use their affiliate links to send visitors to your site. They then earn a commission on sales that would have happened regardless, without actually helping much. This not only increases affiliate payments unfairly but also creates problems with how we track and report results. To prevent this, make clear rules for the affiliate program, and do not allow bidding on brand names.
