Ad hijacking is silent theft. Your ads appear, but the clicks don’t go where they should. Competitors, affiliates, or fraudsters insert themselves into the chain, redirecting traffic and stealing conversions.

The result: wasted budgets, distorted data, and brand dilution.

I’ve seen e-commerce, real estate, tech, and finance brands lose lakhs in a quarter because they didn’t have guardrails against hijackers.

The good news is, you can stop this.

Ten steps to protect your spend and your brand from ad hijacking.

1. Audit your campaigns regularly.

Don’t rely only on dashboards. Check your ad creatives, placements, and landing pages manually every week. There are several tools available that often misdetect cloaking tactics. However, a simple spot-check can reveal suspicious redirects.

2. Use click-tracking software.

Third-party click trackers log the journey from impression to landing page. If you see a strange middle URL, that’s a hijacker at work. In affiliate-heavy industries, this step alone saves tremendous ad spend.

3. Monitor and track sudden CTR or CVR spikes.

If you find your brand's CTR jumping overnight without creative changes, you should inspect it. Ad hijackers piggyback on your brand keywords and trigger inflated clicks. You need to look beyond vanity metrics

4. Enforce strict affiliate terms.

Most ad hijacking originates from rogue affiliates. Updating your contracts with clear no-bidding clauses on brand terms can minimize risk. Ensure you're imposing penalties for violations. For this reason, brands such as Adidas and Booking.com publicly cracked down on affiliates.

5. Deploy brand protection tools.

PPC protection platforms such as BrandVerity and PPC Protect scan search engines for lookalike ads. These tools flag when an ad hijacker impersonates your brand.

6. Strengthen your domain monitoring.

Fraudsters frequently use typo domains or subdomains. Regularly scan for domain variations. In 2022, a global bank blocked over 200 fake domains running hijacked ads targeting its users.

7. Collaborate with search engines.

Google and Bing both allow you to report trademark abuse. You need to file complaints fast. When hijackers feel pressure from the platform, they turn away to other platforms, freeing your brand.

8. Train your team.

The majority of marketers are excellent at optimizing bids but less familiar with ad fraud mechanics. A half-day workshop on hijacking tactics will sharpen their eyes as knowledge beats tools.

9. Analyze post-click behaviour.

Look at bounce rates and time on site. Hijacked clicks often land on extraneous or cloned pages. If you see traffic behaving abnormally, analyze your ads immediately.

10. Treat it as brand security, not only performance.

Ad hijacking is not only about wasted money. It breaks customer trust. If a user clicks your ad and lands on a shady page, they question your brand's credibility. Treat this with the same seriousness you treat cybersecurity.

Ad hijacking won’t vanish tomorrow. It thrives because many brands don’t talk about it openly. However, the brands that fight back save money and their reputation.

Follow these steps to keep your ad spend safe and your data clean.

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About the Author: Terrence Willis has been in the digital marketing game for over 11 years; long enough to know that SEO, paid media, content, and automation aren’t just buzzwords, they’re the tools that actually move the needle. He’s all about crafting full-funnel strategies that turn casual clicks into committed customers. When he’s not tweaking campaigns, you’ll probably find him behind a camera or dabbling in design. Even marketers need a creative outlet that doesn’t involve Google Analytics.