Top Scams in Affiliate Marketing to Know in 2025

Affiliate marketing is a powerful tool for promoting brands. However, with its popularity gaining traction, more dishonest affiliate providers appear. They pose quite a tangible threat to legit companies who seek to attract new clientele, as they:

• Waste money: Spend your budget without any Return on Investment (RoI) whatsoever.

• Provide 0 traffic: This may expose your company to some new followers, but won’t let them get to know your brand instantly due to unclickable links, staked ads, and overall poor technical execution of a promo page.

• Spoil reputation: Often, you risk seeing your brand neighbouring some shady advertising that promises miracle crypto-trading algorithms, offers mail-order brides, or invites you to make a fortune on soccer betting.

We prepared a thorough review of the widespread affiliate marketing scams to watch out for in 2025 with some advice on how to deal with them included.

1. False attributions

It’s a scam method, in which an affiliate falsely takes credit whenever a customer purchases something from your brand. False attributions can be staged with a variety of techniques, but the most effective one is dubbed cookie stuffing.

Cookie stuffing implies that a dishonest provider dumps a load of cookie files onto a user’s computer, this allows tracking their activity online. In case a user decides to shop at your website, the “cookie monster” will falsely claim the conversion to their name, even if they have nothing to do with it.

How to detect: Usually, false attributions can be detected by a surprise wave of conversions, especially if they are claimed to come from a small affiliate provider, charging a low price for their service.

2. Invalid traffic

Invalid traffic is, basically, any type of ingenuine traffic that comes to your website. In other words, someone can click on a link not because they want to know more about your product, but because they were tricked into doing so.

Or, what’s even worse, it can be bots clicking on the link over and over, under the disguise of numerous IPs, to inflate the click-through metrics. According to Google, you won’t be charged for the invalid clicks as they produce no value for the brand in the long run, which is great.

However, if your affiliate budget was already poured into the murky waters of useless traffic, you won’t be able to claim your money back from the provider.

How to detect: Oftentimes, invalid traffic is accompanied by disproportionately lower conversions, sometimes there are none at all. Low conversions don’t always indicate invalid traffic though: at times this anomaly can be caused by a clunky website or poorly optimized pricing. However, if people click a lot but never buy, this is a legitimate reason for suspicion.

If you think you’ve fallen victim to this scheme, you can report it to Google, so they carry out an invalid traffic investigation.

3. Domain impersonation

Domain impersonation is another scam trick, a malicious actor designs a fraudulent site mimicking a genuine one, then uses it to divert visitors to an affiliate scheme.

This can lead to misleading attributions and unwarranted payouts to dishonest providers. To prevent this, you should diligently oversee their affiliate networks and watch for unexpected surges in incoming traffic.

So, you need to thoroughly screen affiliates before hiring them. This may include examining their online presence, confirming their visitor origins, and investigating any past fraudulent activity, as well as checking feedback from their valid clients.

How to detect: Closely track affiliate-driven visits. This can be done by utilizing analytical solutions to monitor and assess referral clicks, as well as configuring notifications for abnormal traffic.

4. Stacked ads

This is a typical scenario: a user clicks on a link that, for example, leads to a collection of mesmerising home screen wallpapers, and then a bunch of other tabs pop up in their browser. Needless to say, nobody wants to deal with that and the tab featuring your company will be angrily closed.

In the worst-case scenario, your brand will get negative exposure: users may think that you employ annoying tactics to promote your product, without you even realising that (!) As a result, your competitors may get ahead, as they will be seen in a more “favourable” light.

How to detect: Stacked ads are pretty hard to detect, they rely on automated scripts and bots that safely bury your advertising beneath a layer of shoddy ads. Again, you should watch out for abnormal spikes in traffic that bring little to no financial return.

Another wholesome tactic is to double-check your affiliate providers, closely monitor your current campaigns, and demand transparent reports on how and with which tools they are implemented online.

5. Brand bidding

Brand bidding is a situation when the keywords related to your company and products get hijacked to drive the traffic that should’ve been yours to another company’s website. However, it can work in reverse and the affiliate partner can steal someone else’s keywords to boost your incoming traffic.

Both situations are harmful. In the former scenario, you risk losing hard-earned clientele, while in the latter you can get reported for unscrupulous marketing methods and put your reputation in jeopardy. (In some cases a lawsuit may ensue.)

How to detect: Brand bidding is quite elusive. To avoid it, you should bid on your own keywords, so no one can steal them, as well as oversee the affiliate campaigns to make sure they don’t violate “fair play” rules and keep your reputation intact.

Besides, it’s recommended to keep an eye on your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy to exclude the incorporation of unwanted search keywords.

****Final Thoughts****

Affiliate scams can quickly drain your marketing budget, distort useful feedback metrics, and even put your brand reputation in danger. Follow our tips to avoid dishonest partnerships and check for more valuable insights later.