Difference between hijackers and brand bidders

Adment detects two distinct types of unauthorized activity on your branded keywords. Understanding the difference helps you prioritize which cases to act on and how.

Brand bidders

A brand bidder is any third party running ads on your branded keywords in search engines. When a user searches your brand name, the brand bidder's ad appears alongside or above your own. The user who clicks lands on the brand bidder's website, not yours.

Brand bidders include competitors trying to capture your audience, review sites and comparison pages featuring your product, unauthorized resellers promoting your brand, and coupon or deal sites targeting your branded searches.

Brand bidding is widespread and not always a policy violation on its own. Competitors are generally allowed to bid on each other's brand terms in most markets. What matters is whether they are using your brand name in the ad copy itself, which constitutes trademark abuse, or whether they are simply bidding on the keyword without referencing your brand directly.

Ad hijackers

An ad hijacker is a specific type of brand bidder with a more deceptive intent. Hijackers are typically affiliates in your program who run ads designed to intercept your branded traffic and collect commission on sales that would have come to you directly.

What makes hijacking different from regular brand bidding:

The ad often mimics your official brand ad, using your brand name in the headline and your website as the apparent destination. The user believes they are clicking your own ad. Behind the scenes, the click passes through one or more redirect URLs that set an affiliate tracking cookie before the user lands on your site. The affiliate collects commission on the resulting sale.

Hijackers keep this activity out of sight by cloaking their links and routing the click through a redirect chain that resolves in a fraction of a second. Nothing in the ad reveals it, which is why ad hijacking is harder to spot manually than regular brand bidding.

Key differences at a glance

• Intent: brand bidders drive traffic to their own sites, hijackers intercept traffic heading to yours.
• Destination: brand bidder ads lead directly to the bidder's own website. Hijacker ads appear to lead to your site but pass through affiliate redirects first.
• Evidence: brand bidder detections show a direct destination URL and no redirect chain. Hijacker detections show a full redirect path with affiliate parameters embedded in the final URL.
• Financial impact: brand bidders raise your CPC by adding competition to your branded keyword auction. Hijackers do the same but also generate commission payments on sales that would have happened anyway, compounding the cost.
• Who they are: brand bidders are often competitors, review sites, or resellers. Hijackers are almost always affiliates who have accepted your program terms and are violating them.