What happens if you wake up one day and login to learn your Google Ads account has been hacked? A hacked Ads account can mean you're budget has been used on useless terms, potential brand damage, or even website security issues for you to solve.

One of the biggest threats to online brand protection is trademark bidding. This is where competitors use your branded keywords in their ads to ultimately drive traffic to their websites. This post will show you how to find the right brand monitoring tool to stop trademark bidding.

Both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) play a crucial role in driving traffic to your website. Both come with distinct strategies, benefits and, of course, compliance rules.

Before we begin, let's first define both marketing channels.
SEO focuses on the non-paid, organic traffic growth you can earn from search engines.
SEM involves paying for ads on search results. In both cases you need to adhere to the guidelines in order to ensure you'll continue getting traffic from search engines.  

Despite an annual decrease until 2021, online copyright infringement saw a 3.3% growth in 2022 and is expected to rise each year thanks to the popularity of AI and large language model systems for creating content online.

We all know that paid search campaigns are highly effective ways to drive traffic to your site.

Since 1999, Ideal Living has been democratizing quality wellness by sharing superior, science-backed products with their customers. They offer a range of products including AirDoctor, AquaTru, WalkFit, and various wellness supplements. As such, maintaining the integrity of their brand while protecting their trademarks is paramount for Ideal Living which is why they partnered with BrandVerityto monitor and address various online challenges. Namely, the brand needed help remedying trademark infringements, fake review websites, and affiliate non-compliance.

Recently, brands have faced increasing threats from imposter advertisers on major search engines like Google or Bing, as well as social media platforms like Meta and TikTok. And despite efforts by media giants like Google to combat fraudulent ads, the problem persists, leaving brands vulnerable to scams, trademark violations, and other forms of digital advertising fraud. Long story short: Brands are losing out big time and paying the literal price for bad actors on search engines more than ever before. 

In the dynamic realm of paid search advertising, brand bidding serves as a cornerstone strategy for businesses to secure prime real estate on search engine results pages (SERPs) and capture valuable leads. However, this landscape has its pitfalls, with bad actors employing brand bidding and ad hijacking tactics that can undermine legitimate advertisers' efforts and investments, including instances of affiliates bidding on brand names, making it crucial for advertisers to diligently police their ads.  

Affiliate PPC fraud is a growing problem plaguing every type of digital marketer across every vertical and often lurks undetected until significant damage has been done. This type of fraud involves bad-acting affiliates who use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to siphon off unearned commissions from brands. The deceptive practices range from creating ads that mimic legitimate brand advertisements to using sophisticated techniques like masking referral links through multiple redirects. These ill-intended activities not only increase the cost per click for the brand but they also dilute the effectiveness of genuine affiliate marketing efforts. But the result is always the same: substantial financial drain and a skewed understanding of campaign performance.