Anura PR Team
The affiliate marketing industry has been around for a long time now, and is still one of the best ways to earn money online. Unfortunately, the allure of making passive income attracts some who are willing to commit fraud for fast riches. With up to 45% of affiliate traffic being fraudulent, it’s alarming to consider how much of this 12 billion dollar industry is lost each year.
Technology is always moving forward, and so are the tactics that fraudsters use to attack affiliate marketing systems. To keep your business safe, it’s crucial to be aware of the common types of affiliate fraud. In this article, we’ll cover four of these so you can protect your marketing budget.
What Are the Most Common Types of Affiliate Fraud?
There are a litany of tactics and technical strategies that fraudsters leverage to commit affiliate fraud. Understanding how each of these methods work to drain affiliate budgets is the first step to protecting your business. Let’s cover four of the most common types of affiliate fraud next.
Inserting Affiliate Code Using Adware or Spyware
Fraudsters use adware or spyware to infect computers and control them in all sorts of ways that affect advertisers. One way this impacts affiliate marketing is by using these tactics to insert affiliate code for fraudulent profits.
Making Clones of Other Affiliate Sites to Steal Traffic
Another common type of affiliate fraud is making clones of affiliate sites. Unsuspecting website visitors are then diverted to these websites to steal affiliate income from otherwise legitimate affiliates.
Using Stolen Personal Information for Lead Generation or to Make Sales
One of the most common types of affiliate fraud is using stolen personal information or credit cards for affiliate sales. This is one of the worst types of fraud because it impacts so many people, potentially costing the business their reputation.
Cookie Stuffing for Lead Misattribution
Companies leverage tracking cookies for lead attribution to give affiliates credit for generating a given click, lead, or sale. Fraudulent affiliates take advantage of this by using cookie stuffing to insert third-party cookies onto an unsuspecting visitor’s browser to falsely claim credit.
How to Protect Your Business from Affiliate Fraud
Affiliate fraud costs companies dearly. The first step to protecting your affiliate programs is by doing your research. Understanding precisely where your advertisers are generating traffic for your affiliate program is possible with an anti-fraud solution.
Regain control of your affiliate program and protect your business from costly invalid traffic from bots, malware, and human fraud farms. Here’s how.
Protect Your Affiliate Program With Anura's Fraud Solution
Anura’s fraud solution analyzes every visitor in-depth to identify and act on fraudulent activity in real-time. Anura empowers business owners with detailed information about why the activity was marked as fraud.
Anura Works With Any Platform
Integrating Anura into your web assets will help minimize the risk of fraud. You can install our solution on any platform for a simple and flexible way to instantly respond to affiliate fraud.
Avoid Falling Victim to Affiliate Fraud
Affiliate fraud is a serious problem that’s not going to disappear. Thankfully, businesses like yours can guard themselves against it. Anura offers a powerful solution for companies affected by affiliate fraud. Our technology doesn’t just detect ad fraud, it enables you to act in real-time.
