Brand Bidding

What is Brand Bidding?

Brand bidding is the practice of purchasing paid search ads on a merchant's trademarked brand name or branded keywords, allowing the affiliate's ad to appear when users search directly for the brand — typically prohibited in affiliate agreements because it intercepts traffic the merchant would have captured organically.

Brand Bidding In Practice

Most affiliate agreements explicitly prohibit brand bidding because it creates direct competition between the affiliate and the merchant for their own branded search traffic, inflates the merchant's effective customer acquisition cost, and can mislead users who are searching for the brand directly. Affiliates caught brand bidding face immediate commission reversal and program termination. Some programs permit brand bidding with specific restrictions — for example, allowing it on brand+modifier keywords ('Moosend review', 'Moosend pricing') but not on the pure brand term ('Moosend'). Read the affiliate agreement's paid advertising section carefully before running any paid search campaign. Merchants typically detect brand bidding within 2–6 weeks through brand monitoring tools like Brand24 or Google Alerts set on their own trademark terms. The prohibition typically extends to social media paid ads targeting users by brand name interest.

Example of Brand Bidding