The Invisible Tax on Your Ads
Companies — especially small ones — often neglect brand bidding adwords. And that’s a snake in the grass. You may be unaware, but this snakey can be biting your traffic, which can render your entire advertising campaign fruitless.
We’ll explain how you can avoid this ethereal threat.
Traffic Thieves: How They Operate
So, one day you turn to the PPC dashboard and see a puzzling picture: the clicks are piling up, but the actual conversions are the same or even lower. Does this situation look familiar?
If yes, your business has fallen victim to the traffic siphoning. It’s actually a widespread nuisance: The World Federation of Advertisers reports that 10,000 scam websites, now defunct, had been producing as much as 12 billion biddings to disguise themselves as legit web publishers.
This is done due to many reasons. On one hand we have young and small companies that try whatever “grey zone” trick they can to promote their stuff. On the other hand, this tactic is frequently exploited by the fraudsters who seek to infect people’s PCs, steal their data, sell counterfeit products, and produce other types of harm.
How they do it: The root of all evil is the keyword bidding. Keywords are used in search queries whenever we Google something and that applies to your business as well. No matter what you offer, be it candy bars, plumbing services, or sodium-ion batteries — there will be specific keywords pertaining to your field of expertise, like “Plumbers in Manchester” or “souvenir chocolate with cashew”.
These words are a key to the successful SEO strategy, as they allow people in need of your service to discover your name. And that’s what the dishonest rivals and criminals rely on. They bid on your own keywords, that can be trademarked, to advertise their web outlets.
As a result a person in search of a competent plumber or savory chocolate can be redirected to another place, completely unrelated to your business. You lose traffic, they gain conversions and clicks.
How Ads Hijacking Works Against You
Typically, hijacked ads and stolen keywords result in the following problems:
- Wasted ads budget
You can craft a beautiful campaign and pour in buckets of money. But if it’s not your name occupying the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) whenever someone googles your stuff, that’s bad. As Fire&Spark reports, 99% of viewers interact only with the first page of the SERP.
- Lost revenue
It’s not just the traffic that gets noiselessly siphoned — everyone clicking on the dishonest rival’s link is your potential customer.This type of competition literally snatches sales from your hands that were meant to boost your revenue.
- Reputational damages
And that’s perhaps the worst type of loss: undermined reputation. It occurs whenever a potential buyer runs into fraudsters or counterfeit sellers. The former, while disguised as a legitimate brand, practice phishing to steal valuable data: card details, addresses, contact info.
The latter sell shabby copies of a good product — in the long run it erodes people’s trust in your brand as they draw a parallel between a recognizable logo that they know and the crappy quality of the stuff they received. Sadly, many of them can fall into the self-deception trap and blame you, also a victim, for the dissatisfying experience.
Top Strategies to avoid Ads Hijacking
Luckily, you can dodge the bullet. Here are the best 3 ways to ruin the day for the hijackers.
- Ads monitoring to the rescue
Why: It takes care of the hassle that impostor ad detecting typically is.
Think of automated monitoring as your brand’s angel guardian, working tirelessly while your team sleeps. This isn’t the occasional manual search, it’s a sophisticated, always-on sentinel programme to patrol the search engine landscape. It operates by simulating real searches for your key brand terms — not just from a single computer, but from different UK cities, different countries, and across various devices and platforms. 24/7, no tea breaks.
This geo-specific intelligence is pretty crucial, as hijackers often target various regions. The moment it detects an imposter ad — a competitor bidding on your name or an unauthorised affiliate siphoning your traffic — it takes a note and then takes action.
It sends an immediate alert directly to your inbox or, for example, Slack. This transforms your strategy from reactive panic to proactive defence, giving you the real-time evidence needed to quickly file complaints and reclaim your digital turf, turning a constant threat into a managed process.
- Keyword bidding
Why: You’ll get ahead of the rivals and fraudsters by securing your keywords.
Even though it seems unfair — paying for something that may already have a ™ logo on it — that’s a necessity. Google Ads allows using the trademarked search terms by the competitors, as this policy provides more or less honest rivalry.
So, the only possible way out is to act faster than them. You can either handpick all the keywords that pertain to your company, or hire a brand protection agency that will do this for you much faster: there’s no time to lose as bidding is a race, almost Cheltenham-style.
- Filling complaints
It’s one thing if somebody abuses your trademarked keyword. But if they masquerade as you, that’s a green light for legal action. Google Ads forbids brand impersonation, which is, by the way, the favorite tactic of fraudsters and counterfeit sellers.
If you notice a website that artfully mimics yours in terms of web-design, abuses your brand name or uses one that is highly similar, and their URL is suspiciously identical to your web-address — gather evidence in the form of screenshots. As soon as you have enough proof, you can go to the Google Ads Complaints and file a report against unethical business conduct.
Note: Make sure that your brand and product names are properly registered. Go to the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) at gov.uk for more info.
Say Goodbye to Ads Hijackers
Ads hijacking is no longer a threat you have to accept. By embracing automated monitoring, UK brands can move from being vulnerable targets to empowered guardians of their digital presence. The result is not just a protected budget, but a stronger brand, happier customers, and the freedom to focus on what you do best — growing your business.