What Are the Risk Factors Associated with Brand Infringement?

 

Brand protection and safety are the integral components of your company’s defensive marketing strategy. Brand Infringement is a serious issue that can severely affect your brand’s reputation in the target market.

Online marketing strategies like affiliate marketing are dynamic and offer fantastic reach. But when you fail to monitor your affiliate networks, threats from malicious actors can compromise your company’s reputation.

Threat actors actively leverage brand infringement tactics to their advantage. Brand infringement is a severe issue in the world of affiliate marketing. In affiliate marketing, a large portion of your marketing activities relies on the brand’s reputation.

The legitimate affiliates of your company rely on digital and social platforms to earn conversions. As the affiliate marketing model is lucrative, malicious affiliates often use it for accomplishing fraudulent objectives. Brand infringement is one of the most common tactics used by threat actors to mislead your leads and customers. The repercussions of violation on brands are a matter of concern.  

Repercussions of Brand Infringement

It is common for all major companies to use affiliate marketing to accomplish their conversion goals. But brand infringement poses severe threats to your organization’s marketing objectives.

Threat actors rely on brand infringement to execute affiliate frauds. Nefarious affiliates are always on the lookout to steal your company’s copyright, design rights, and patents. Some wide-scale repercussions of brand infringement are as follows:

ü  Loss of reputation of the brand

ü  People lose faith in your company’s affiliate network

ü  Your sales and revenue will be on the negative side

With effective session hijacking prevention, you can hinder the ill intentions of malicious affiliates. Preventing session hijacking allows you to avoid brand abuse.

Threats of Brand Abuse are real

Brand abuse refers to nefarious affiliates exploiting your brand’s intellectual property. Nefarious affiliates do so to take advantage of your company’s reputation. Here are the forms of brand abuse you should know.

ü  Rogue Websites

ü  Typosquatting

ü  Cookie Hijacking

ü  Violation of Paid Ads

Your company’s marketing team should monitor the affiliate network to identify any type of threat.

The Adverse Effects of Rogue Websites

Designed by nefarious affiliates, the primary objective of rogue websites is to steal the commission of your legitimate affiliates. They also infringe on your brand’s digital assets when not countered on time. They come in a number of variations like:

ü  Cybersquatters

Cybersquatters are websites that claim domain names to take advantage of your company’s trademarks.

ü  Imitation Websites

Customary to their name, they look exactly like the website of a reputed and original brand.

ü  Typosquatters

They rely on the mistakes of the users while typing the address of the websites.

Marketing teams are deploying affiliate marketing tracking platforms to secure their brand from infringement.

Risks of Brand Infringement

Brand infringement may lead to a drastic dip in your company’s sales. Malicious affiliates rely on brand infringement to earn commissions illegally. Here are the risks related to brand infringement.

Time Consuming and Unusual Delays

Nefarious affiliates and counterfeiters can smell success from miles away. As soon as your marketing team launches an affiliate network, threat actors may illegally use it for malicious intent. With adequate protection and tracking platforms, you can utilize your time to expand the affiliate network. Expanding your company becomes more straightforward with the right affiliate tracking platforms.

Dents your Reputation

Customers trust you based on your company’s reputation. But malicious affiliates often target your company’s affiliate marketing network, thereby crippling it. They can redirect your customers to fake websites and steal their credit card information. These types of events can severely dent your organization’s reputation in the current market.

How do Nefarious Affiliates infringe on your Company’s Reputation?

The advent of digital technology and its steady evolution is allowing brands to reach new customers. It is common for modern-day companies to use affiliate marketing to earn conversions and rewards. Here are some ways in which nefarious affiliates infringe on your company’s reputation.

ü  Phishing Attacks

Phishing attacks can introduce malware to your users’ devices. These attacks are also responsible for stealing the data of your customers.

ü  Domain Spoofing

Nefarious affiliates with malicious intent register domains to mimic legitimate sources. Domain spoofing allows nefarious affiliates to trick the buyers.

ü  Social Media Attacks

Malicious affiliates can create social media accounts to impersonate brands and interact with customers. Note that these conversations may comprise links to spoofed websites.

ü  Violation of Paid Ads

Threats actors rely on paid ads violation to direct customers to irrelevant sources. It can make your brand lose legitimate traffic.

How does VPT assist you in protecting your Company’s Reputation?

Some of the most prominent brands rely on Virus Positive Technologies to safeguard their reputation. VPT can help to implement ad fraud detection platforms to secure your affiliate network. The brand compliance monitoring tools and solutions of VPT are ideal for securing your reputation. They also monitor your digital advertising channels.