Most brands don’t realize how much traffic they lose each day to unauthorized bidding, affiliate violations, and ad hijacking.
Industry data shows ad fraud reached an estimated $84 billion of global digital ad spend in 2023.
If your branded CPCs keep rising or competitors keep appearing above you in searches for your own name, this PPC brand protection guide can help you understand why – and what to do next.
What is brand protection in PPC?
Brand protection is the practice of defending your brand from unauthorized use of your branded search terms in PPC and from deceptive or fraudulent ad placements.
The goal: make sure people searching for your brand or product name land on your official pages – not a competitor’s, affiliate’s, or reseller’s.
When done well, brand protection safeguards traffic while strengthening your brand image and customer loyalty.
Without a brand protection strategy, you’ll face steep losses – higher CPCs, rising affiliate costs, and a drop in customer acquisition.
Activities tied to PPC brand protection include:
- Monitoring who bids on your branded keywords.
- Spotting unusual spikes in CPCs or impression share.
- Identifying unauthorized trademark use in paid search.
- Detecting hidden, geo-targeted ads meant to avoid detection.
- Enforcing compliance rules for affiliates and partners.
Core threats and risks
The three main sources of threats are:
- Competitors: Targeting your branded searches is an easy way for them to tap into high-intent traffic and intercept your audience.
- Affiliates: If you miss dishonest tactics, you end up paying for leads you would have won on your own – driving up costs without adding customers.
- Fraudsters: Their increasingly opaque tactics can cause serious financial and reputational damage to your brand.
If you don’t protect your brand in paid search, you’re likely to face these common risks:
- Brand bidding: Others bid on your branded queries to capture high-intent searches, drive up CPCs, and cut into your impression share. Over time, you’re forced to spend more to regain position, lowering your ROI.
- Ad hijacking: Competitors or fraudsters mimic your messaging, ad structure, or landing pages to make users think they’re clicking your official ad.
- Malicious redirects: Clicks on “brand-looking” ads lead to phishing, malware, or low-quality pages.
- Ad copy misalignment: Affiliates use unapproved messaging, outdated claims, or promotions you’re not running, which erodes trust and harms your brand image.
- Comparative or misleading ad copies: Copy that positions another product as a direct replacement for yours to divert conversions.
These risks demand a dedicated PPC protection strategy. Left unchecked, they drive up acquisition costs and cause you to lose customers at the final decision stage.
Why you need to protect your brand in today’s PPC landscape
Failing to protect your brand in PPC erodes trust, skews attribution, and weakens your marketing over time. As a result, conversions drop, ROI slips, and your paid media becomes less effective.
Key facts:
- Global ad fraud costs are projected to grow to $172 billion by 2028 (Statista)
- 69.7% of marketers reported problems with “spam or fake lead submissions” coming from their paid media campaigns (Lunio)
- Cross-industry anti-fraud initiatives saved U.S. advertisers $10.8 billion in 2023 (TAG)
Essential components of a strong brand protection strategy
PPC tactics for effective PPC protection
When your campaigns are organized clearly and systematically, you can control risks more easily and respond faster to unauthorized activity.
Key elements of a well-planned brand protection strategy include:
- Account structure: Keep your campaigns clearly segmented. Separate branded ads so you can spot anomalies in CPCs and impression share.
- Negative keyword strategy: Use targeted negatives—partner names, resellers, and irrelevant variations—to cut noise and prevent unwanted triggers around your brand.
- Rules for affiliates: Set clear policies to prevent most violations and make it easier to detect risks and enforce compliance.
Monitoring and automation for PPC brand protection
Manual monitoring can’t keep up with competitors and fraudsters who constantly rotate tactics. A strong brand protection strategy relies on automated monitoring to catch threats early and resolve them before they affect your budget, CPCs, or conversions.
Core components of effective automation include:
- Monitoring systems: Continuously track and surface unauthorized bidders, affiliate violations, and unusual competitor activity.
- Real-time alerts: Get notified the moment issues appear so you can respond quickly.
Key metrics to measure your brand protection strategy
You can measure the effectiveness of your PPC brand protection efforts by tracking metrics that show the scale of violations and how efficiently you respond to them.
Key metrics include:
- Violations count: How many unauthorized activities were detected across branded searches during a set timeframe.
- Enforcement rate: How effectively you acted on those violations.
- Cost savings: The budget you recovered by reducing CPC inflation and stopping commission leakage.
- Branded CTR recovery: How much your visibility and click-through rate improved after removing violators.
Together, these metrics provide a clear view of how well your brand protection strategy is performing and where you may need to make improvements.
Industry cases of effective PPC brand protection
Automotive: Car.co.uk
UAWC agency shared a use case involving a car company that was losing branded traffic in paid search. The source of the problem turned out to be competitors’ aggressive brand bidding tactics.
To recover the losses, the brand had to employ UAWC to audit competitors, identify branded keyword conflicts, restructure ad campaigns, and closely monitor auction dynamics.
As a result, branded impression share rose to 95%, protecting high-intent traffic and stabilizing CPCs.
iGaming: Rhino Affiliates
Rhino was grappling with affiliate fraud and unauthorized brand bidding on its flagship brand. With the help of Bluepear, they uncovered 105 violators.
Using reports and screenshots as evidence, Rhino successfully disputed payments – ultimately saving €131,000 and restoring their branded search visibility.
How Bluepear helps you protect your brand automatically
Monitoring is the operational backbone of brand protection – that’s exactly where Bluepear delivers the most impact.
After signing up: You create an account and fully customise it with the help of a built-in AI-assistant – it only takes 10 minutes. From there, you get instant access to automated brand monitoring. Bluepear reveals every violation, including:
- Brand bidding: Identifies advertisers targeting your branded keywords across markets and devices.
- Affiliate violations: Flags partners who break program rules by bidding on brand terms, using unapproved messaging, or redirecting traffic.
- Hidden ads: Detects ads that are visible only in specific regions or time periods – a common tactic used by violators to evade detection.
Bluepear alerts you to every violation and backs each one with clear evidence and screenshots. This gives you airtight proof for fast escalation and cuts the time you spend disputing payments with affiliates and PPC platforms.
Impact: After removing unauthorized bidders, you gain cleaner attribution, lower acquisition costs, and stronger efficiency across all paid channels.
Final recommendations for scalable PPC protection
- Continuous monitoring: New violators can appear at any moment. Ongoing monitoring ensures you catch issues before they inflate CPCs or drain conversions.
- Strict affiliate rules: Well-defined rules reduce ambiguity and improve long-term compliance.
- Automation-first approach: Automation speeds detection, supports faster decisions, and scales protection across markets and campaigns.
- Consistent enforcement: Fast, repeatable enforcement maintains deterrence and keeps branded auctions clean.
Most of the damage to your branded traffic happens out of sight – hidden ads, affiliate rule breaks, and impersonation fraud. Bluepear uncovers it all instantly, starting at just $169 a month after a free trial.
See what’s been slipping through:
Try Bluepear’s solution for brand protection and detect hidden brand bidding in minutes.
