The Top Affiliate Marketing Traps You Must Watch Out For

Affiliate marketing is a lucrative opportunity with opportunities for your company and its affiliates. If you want to penetrate a new target market, affiliate marketing can be a smart move. But, the risks of affiliate fraud can affect your brand’s popularity in a negative manner. As your affiliates only get paid when they make a purchase, the possibility of fraud always looms large.

In 2022, nearly 17% of traffic coming from affiliate fraud is fake. By 2023, your marketing team’s loss to fraud will rise to $100 billion. While conducting affiliate programs, you should be on the watchout for fraud. It can cause huge dents to your marketing budget. Paying the legitimate affiliates their due commissions won’t affect your budget. But it hurts to pay those who drain your budget.

Based on the type of affiliate traps, how long fraud goes undetected can vary. Threat actors can inflate your sales, which offers a low ROI to the marketing team. Note that there is no one type of affiliate trap you must watch out for.

Nefarious affiliates can exploit affiliate programs in varied ways. Irrespective of the payment models like CPA (cost-per-acquisition) or CPL (cost-per-lead), your affiliate programs are susceptible to fraud.

What are Affiliate Traps?

Affiliate traps refer to the fraudulent techniques malicious affiliates use to deceive your marketing team. The primary purpose of these affiliate traps is to steal your marketing revenue. Threat actors can also hijack your customer’s buying journey through affiliate traps.

Affiliate marketing’s attribution methodologies aren’t always safe from fraudulent activities. To safeguard your company from affiliate fraud, ensure that you know about the common traps laid by threat actors.

Identifying Affiliate Traps – What Should You Know?

When left unchecked, affiliate traps can affect your brand’s bottom line. If you are trying to build your presence in a new target market, the last thing you want is affiliate fraud. Here are the common affiliate marketing traps in 2023 that you must stay protected from.

Cookie Stuffing

Cookie stuffing is a major affiliate trap where nefarious affiliates place tracking cookies on your customer’s devices without permission. It is an unethical practice with the aim to misattribute sales to the threat actors. One of the best ways to avoid cookie stuffing is by investing in affiliate fraud detection solutions. Here is how cookie stuffing works to cause fraud.

·       The Actions of the Threat Actor

The threat actor executes cookie stuffing by placing tracking cookies into their website’s code or digital content.

·       The Interaction of Your Users

The users visit the affiliate’s website and interact with the content that contains tracking cookies. This interaction happens without their knowledge.

·       The Placement of Cookies

Upon the interaction of your customers with the nefarious affiliate’s website, the tracking cookie gets embedded on the user’s device. It can stay on the user’s device for an unspecified duration. For instance, the tracking cookies can remain on their devices for a few days to several months.

·       Misattribution of Sales

After placing the malicious tracking cookies, the threat actor misattributes the sales. Any action undertaken by the user is falsely attributed to the nefarious affiliate.

Cookie Hijacking

Cookie hijacking, also known as session hijacking, is a major affiliate trap. It happens when the threat actors intercept or steal the session cookies. These cookies are small txt files that maintain the user’s session on your website. Cookie hijacking is an affiliate trap with severe ramifications. Here is the working mechanism of cookie hijacking.

·       Initiation of the User’s Session

When the user logs into your company’s website, the server creates a session and assigns the ID to the user. This session ID is stored on the user’s device.

·       The Transmission of Cookies

The session cookie is exchanged between your user’s browser and the website’s server. The session contains the cookie which the server uses to recognize the user.

·       Role of Nefarious Affiliates

The nefarious affiliate intercepts the session cookie by exploiting vulnerabilities in your website.

·       The Utilization of the Stolen Cookie

The main reason behind stealing session cookies is to impersonate the user. Threat actors can access the user’s account and perform certain actions on their behalf.

Typosquatting

Typosquatting, also known as URL hijacking, is a form of affiliate marketing trap. It involves the creation of domain names similar to your company’s official website. It capitalizes on common typos, misspellings, etc., from your users. 

As an affiliate trap, typosquatting aims to affect your brand’s credibility. The typosquatted domain impersonates the look and feel of your website, thus creating confusion. When the users interact with the affiliate links posted on this website, the threat actors earn commissions.

Know How the Affiliates are Promoting Your Company with VPT

VPT (Virus Positive Technologies) is your one-stop solution for helping you maintain affiliate marketing compliance. With the customized affiliate fraud solutions of VPT, tackling affiliate traps has become easier. VPT can help you monitor ads and affiliate campaigns seamlessly.