The common schemes
- Cookie stuffing — dropping affiliate tracking cookies on users who never clicked a link, so the affiliate steals credit for organic sales.
- Brand bidding — running paid search ads on your trademark to intercept buyers already looking for you, claiming a commission on a sale you'd have made for free.
- Coupon and loyalty abuse — last-click attribution hijacked by coupon or cashback sites that inject themselves at checkout after another affiliate (or you) did the real work.
- Fake leads / sales — manufactured form fills or self-purchases on lead and CPA programs.
- Adware and typosquatting — software or lookalike domains that force affiliate cookies onto users.
How to detect it
Fraud leaves statistical fingerprints. Review your program for:
- An affiliate with huge click or impression volume and a strangely high — or near-zero — conversion rate.
- Conversions clustering in implausible patterns: identical timestamps, one IP, or zero on-site time.
- A spike in "assisted" or last-click conversions right at checkout from coupon domains.
- Branded search terms in the referral data when your terms forbid brand bidding.
This is the merchant-side mirror of click fraud — same incentives, viewed from the paying end.
Prevent it in your terms
Most fraud is cheaper to prevent than to claw back. Write your program terms to explicitly prohibit:
- Bidding on your brand or trademark + close variants in paid search.
- Cookie stuffing, forced clicks, adware, and typosquatting.
- Self-referrals and incentivized traffic you haven't approved.
State that violating commissions are voided and accounts terminated. Terms you don't enforce are decoration.
Vet, monitor, and validate
Three habits stop most of it: vet applicants before approval (covered in program management); monitor traffic and conversion patterns continuously, using your software's fraud flags; and validate sales before payout — hold commissions through your return window and confirm leads are real. The net-30/net-60 payout delay exists partly for this.
What networks and software handle
Reputable networks and management platforms run their own fraud detection — IP analysis, device fingerprinting, and anomaly scoring — and give you tools to set brand-bidding rules and clawback violating commissions. They reduce your exposure but don't eliminate it; the merchant still sets and enforces the terms.