August 13, 2026 · 8 min read
Open a fresh browser window in incognito mode and search Google for your brand name. Look at the paid results above the organic listings. If you see an ad that leads to your own website - but through an affiliate tracking link - you have a trademark bidding problem.
Trademark bidding is when an affiliate adds your brand name (or close variations of it) as keywords in their own Google Ads campaigns. Their ad appears when someone searches specifically for your brand, the customer clicks the affiliate link, arrives at your site, and buys. The affiliate earns commission. The customer was already searching for you by name. They would have found you regardless.
You paid commission on demand you already had. That's what makes it different from almost every other affiliate program issue - it's not a data problem or an attribution gray area. It's commission paid in exchange for zero incremental value.
The mechanics are straightforward. An affiliate signs up for your program, gets their tracking link, and sets up a Google Ads campaign. They add your brand name as a keyword - "YourBrand," "YourBrand reviews," "YourBrand coupon," and common variations. When a customer types any of those terms into Google, the affiliate's ad can appear in the paid results above your own brand campaign.
The affiliate's ad often looks nearly identical to a legitimate ad from your brand. Same product names, same brand language, sometimes similar creative. The customer clicks, lands on your site through the affiliate's tracking link, buys, and the affiliate collects commission. The affiliate spent money on the click (usually a small amount, since brand keywords are often cheap) and earned commission on a high-intent, near-certain conversion. The math is extremely favorable for them.
The conversion rate tells the story: Brand-keyword traffic converts at 5-15% - three to five times higher than non-brand search. When an affiliate suddenly shows a conversion rate well above program average with no obvious explanation, brand bidding is frequently the cause. They're not converting better; they're capturing customers who had already decided to buy.
Trademark bidding is one of the most profitable things an affiliate can do - which is why it happens. The economics are difficult to argue with from their side.
The most obvious cost is commission paid on sales that required no affiliate contribution. But that's not the whole picture.
Detection requires a combination of passive signals and active checking. The passive signals can alert you that something is off; the active check confirms it.
If a partner's conversion rate is significantly above your program average - and there's no obvious explanation like a dedicated landing page, an exclusive promo code, or a particularly relevant audience - brand bidding is a common cause. A content affiliate with a 0.8% conversion rate who suddenly shows 7% for a sustained period is worth investigating. The math of their attribution doesn't add up without an external factor.
Some trademark bidders drive conversions through redirects that don't register as standard clicks in your affiliate network's reporting. If a partner is generating attributed revenue with a click volume that seems implausibly low relative to their conversions, the traffic source isn't what it appears to be.
Content affiliate revenue typically spikes when a piece of content goes live and declines as the content ages. A steady, climbing revenue trend with no corresponding content activity is worth scrutinizing - it often indicates a paid traffic source rather than organic content performance.
Open an incognito window and search Google for your brand name, your brand name plus product categories, and your brand name plus "review" and "coupon." Note any paid ads that appear. Click through any that look affiliate-like and check the URL for tracking parameters. AvantLink and Impact both use recognizable URL structures that make affiliate links identifiable. Do this monthly, and do it from different devices and geographic locations if you have the resources - ad targeting means what you see may not be what your customers see.
Also check Bing. Many affiliates run the same campaigns across Google and Microsoft Advertising simultaneously, and Bing is often less monitored by brand owners.
Your affiliate agreement almost certainly prohibits trademark bidding already - this is standard language in most affiliate program terms. If you've confirmed a partner is bidding on your brand keywords, the response is direct.
Before taking any action, screenshot the ad with the URL visible, note the date and the search query that surfaced it, and record the affiliate's ID from the tracking link. This documentation matters if the affiliate disputes your findings or if you need to make a case to the network.
Don't start with termination. Send a direct message citing your agreement's trademark bidding clause, attach your documentation, and give them 48-72 hours to cease the campaigns. In most cases - particularly with smaller affiliates - this is enough. They either didn't realize it violated the terms or they assumed no one was monitoring.
Hi [name], I noticed your affiliate tracking link appearing in paid search ads for [brand name] search terms. Per our affiliate agreement (section [X]), bidding on brand trademark keywords isn't permitted. I've attached a screenshot for reference. Please pause any campaigns targeting brand keywords within the next 48 hours. Happy to discuss non-brand search opportunities that would be within program terms. Let me know if you have questions.
Both AvantLink and Impact give merchants the ability to void or reverse pending commissions. If you can identify the period during which the bidding was active, reversing those commissions is appropriate - the affiliate earned nothing for those sales. Be conservative with reversal scope: only reverse what you can directly attribute to the violation period with reasonable confidence.
A partner who acknowledges the cease request and stops is usually fine to keep in the program with a documented warning on file. A partner who continues, pauses and restarts, or re-enrolls under a different name is a program integrity issue that warrants termination and a block at the network level.
Detection is necessary, but the better goal is creating conditions where brand bidding doesn't occur or is caught immediately.
Manually searching your brand across browsers and cross-referencing partner conversion rates every month is a discipline that most programs maintain inconsistently. It's easy to defer during busy periods, and a trademark bidding campaign that runs for three months while you're focused elsewhere can be a significant commission exposure.
OptimizeAffiliate's trademark bidding detection runs automatically and surfaces alerts in your Actions Inbox when a partner's attribution pattern matches the signature of brand-keyword traffic. When an alert fires, it names the specific partner, the relevant performance window, and the anomaly that triggered it - so you can go from detection to direct outreach in the same session rather than spending time on the diagnostic work yourself.
OptimizeAffiliate - Trademark Bidding detection
Monitors for the conversion rate and attribution patterns that indicate brand keyword bidding. When a partner's numbers don't match what their content reach can explain, the trademark bidding alert surfaces in your Actions Inbox with the specific partner and data - before months of unearned commission have accumulated.
Free on the Shopify App Store →In most affiliate programs, yes - standard affiliate terms prohibit it explicitly. A small number of programs permit it under specific conditions (some brands allow it for resellers or authorized retailers with negotiated terms), but for the vast majority of Shopify brand affiliate programs, any bidding on brand trademark keywords by an affiliate without explicit written permission is a violation.
No - negative keywords control what triggers your own ads, not whose else's ads appear. You can't use your own campaign settings to suppress a competitor's (or an affiliate's) ads. The only way to remove the affiliate's ad is through the affiliate program enforcement channel, not through your own paid search account.
This is common - many affiliates run legitimate content operations and add brand keyword campaigns on top. The answer is to stop the brand bidding while preserving the partnership for their legitimate activity. The commission from brand-keyword-sourced conversions wasn't earned; the commission from their content traffic was. Most affiliates who value the relationship will comply with a cease request when they understand the terms and that enforcement is real.
Yes. Microsoft Advertising (Bing/Edge) has meaningful market share - around 8-12% of search in the US - and is frequently overlooked by brand owners focused on Google. Affiliates running trademark bidding campaigns often run the same campaigns on Microsoft Advertising simultaneously, with less competition and sometimes lower CPCs. A clean-browser search on Bing for your brand name takes 30 seconds and is worth the habit.