How does AdCrime detect fraud?

Sonar, our detection engine, examines live Google search results for your brand terms across every major market. When we find sponsored ads leading to affiliate tracking URLs, we capture the full evidence: ad screenshot, redirect chain, affiliate IDs, network details, and any coupon codes used. Every detection is classified automatically with a confidence score.

What’s included in the free scan?

Everything. We scan your brand keywords across every major market and send you a complete PDF report within 24 hours. The report includes every detection with screenshots, classifications, and evidence. No account or credit card required.

What if you find nothing?

Then you’ll know your brand is clean, and that’s valuable information too. In our corpus, which skews toward exposure-prone programs, 7 in 10 scanned brand portfolios produced at least one detection. Either way, you get the report.

What regions do you scan from?

Every plan runs on Sonar, our detection engine, with coverage across every major search market out of the box: North America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania are all covered, and every finding is tagged with the market it was captured in. Need depth in a specific market that matters to your program? Enterprise plans include personalized scan coverage. Talk to us at mario@adcrime.com.

What do I do with the evidence once I have it?

Forward it to your affiliate network’s compliance team with a request to terminate the violating affiliate. The evidence package is designed to be immediately actionable: screenshots, redirect chains, and affiliate IDs. Networks take enforcement action when presented with this level of proof.

AdCrime

Affiliate Brand-Bidding Detection

Stop Paying Affiliates for Customers You Already Own.

Since February we've followed 8,668 ads on brand-name searches to where they actually go. 3,612 were affiliates intercepting the click, captured with the publisher ID your network needs to act. First evidence on your brand in 24 hours.

Get a Free Brand Scan View Sample Case File

No credit card requiredResults in 24 hours30-day full refund · Evidence yours either way

Best fit for programs with 50+ active affiliates or $10K+ in monthly commissions.

Built by an independent team in the EU. No VC funding. No sales calls. Just evidence.

Real Case File
CONFIRMED HIJACK
Singapore · 2026
Affiliate brand-bid hijack on coupon query
query████████coupon
networkAwin
publisher id#941621
violatorbarakatalan.com
Redirect chain
Google Ad↓barakatalan.com↓awin1.com↓████████·brand
Forward-ready for network compliance

Live

interceptions captured

Field Ledger

The numbers from the floor.

In the corpus behind our 2026 State of Affiliate Brand-Bidding report, 7 in 10 scanned brand portfolios produced at least one detection. These are the running totals, pulled live from Sonar, our detection engine.

8,600Ads FollowedBrand-name searches, every major market

3,600Interceptions CapturedDetections shipped with full evidence

357Distinct OffendersUnique violator domains behind the detections

6Networks DecodedPublisher IDs extracted from every hop

Updated hourly · numbers rounded down

The Problem

You're Paying Affiliates to Steal Your Own Customers

A customer searches for your brand.

A real user types your brand plus a buying modifier: coupon, deal, promo, discount.

An affiliate intercepts the click.

A sponsored ad sits above your own result and routes the visitor through tracked links first.

You still pay for the sale.

The customer converts anyway, but now the order carries a commission for traffic that was already yours.

Across our scans, roughly 4 in 10 sponsored ads on branded buying-intent searches were affiliates intercepting the click. Heaviest where coupon and promo keywords go unmonitored.

Exhibit A · Real Case

One Case File. Every Field Captured.

Pulled directly from our live detection database. Brand name shown exactly as the violator displayed it publicly: that's the violation. Violator domain, network, publisher ID, coupon codes, and redirect chain preserved as captured. This is what lands in a customer's inbox within 24 hours.

Classification

CONFIRMED FRAUD

Confidence

100%

Region scanned

🇸🇬 Singapore

Detected

2026-04-23 · 12:08 UTC

The search

query: [brand name] coupon

Target: a mid-market VPN brand. Free scan requested by the brand.

The ad we caught

Sponsored · www.barakatalan.com/fastestvpn/coupons
www.barakatalan.com/fastestvpn/coupons · FastestVPN Coupon Code | Upto 93% Discount & Offers
Ad text as captured

The redirect chain · traced live

Google Ad · sponsored slot
barakatalan.com (coupon site)
awin1.com/cread.php · tracking redirect
[brand].com · landing

The publisher (smoking gun)

networkAwin
publisher id#941621
merchant id#90211

A static publisher ID, not a click hash. The exact account number the brand forwards to Awin compliance to get the affiliate terminated.

Unauthorized coupon codes

AR26CM24

Codes distributed without authorization under the brand's program terms. Commissions on these conversions are disputable inside the network's reversal window.

Detection signals

Landing page contains known affiliate network links
Strong affiliate params: awinaffid present
Known affiliate network: Awin
Coupon codes found: AR26, CM24
Multi-domain redirect chain (3 domains)
Coupon/deal site detected: barakatalan.com
Coupon site bidding on coupon/discount keyword
COMBO: Coupon site + affiliate params + coupon codes
FLOOR: Coupon site + coupon keyword + coupon codes visible
Publisher accounts detected: Awin #941621

This is one report from one scan. In unmonitored programs, this is rarely the only case: first scans often surface multiple violators across coupon, promo, and review queries.

Scan Your Brand for Free →

The Next 24 Hours

Here's What Happens Next.

From the moment you submit your domain to the moment the evidence lands in your inbox. That's the free scan. Once you're monitoring, the loop is faster.

You tell us the brand.

One short form. No credit card, no sales call, no demo booking. Takes thirty seconds.

You · 30 seconds

Sonar scans every major market.

Our detection engine runs real Google searches on your brand terms across the world's major search markets, looking for affiliates bidding on your name. Every violator is documented with screenshots, publisher IDs, ad copy, and redirect chains.

Sonar · runs in minutes

Your case file lands in 24 hours.

You receive a PDF with every fraudster we found, ready to forward to your affiliate network for clawback. Then you decide whether to subscribe and keep the detection running. No pressure, no follow-up sales sequence, no awkward “checking in” emails.

Your inbox · manually reviewed before it ships

After Signup

Every scan runs live on Sonar in minutes. Reports generate instantly.

The 24-hour promise is the free first scan. We review it manually before it ships. Once you're monitoring, new keywords, new markets, and fresh case files turn around in minutes, not days.

Evidence to Action

Detection is step one. Here's the rest of the workflow.

A case file is only useful if it converts to terminated affiliates and recovered commissions. We hand off ready-to-forward evidence; your team and the affiliate networks do the enforcement. Here's the actual sequence after the PDF lands in your inbox.

Forward the dossier to network compliance.

Each case file is forwarding-ready: screenshot, redirect chain, publisher ID, ad copy, timestamp, region. You attach it to a one-line email to Awin, Impact, CJ, or whichever network the violator is registered with. The static publisher ID is the unique key compliance teams need to act.

You · about 5 minutes per case.

Dispute the commissions paid on hijacked traffic.

Many networks and programs have locking or reversal windows, often around 30-90 days depending on the platform and contract. The publisher ID and timestamped evidence are exactly what their commission-dispute process needs. We include the Pro-tier C&D template language for the cases that escalate.

Network compliance · same day to several business days once evidence is accepted.

Affiliate gets actioned.

Networks vary, but the dossier gives them what they need to review, reverse, remove, or escalate the publisher account. In repeat-offender cases (cross-brand violations, typosquats, cloaking), the network can block the publisher network-wide. The operational outcome: you stop paying that affiliate, and so does every other brand on the network.

Network · outcome and timing vary by platform and severity.

AdCrime produces the dossier. Your affiliate manager forwards it. The network does the termination and the clawback. We don't replace your network compliance team. We hand them the one thing they can't produce on their own: the static publisher ID, with evidence, in 24 hours.

Network Coverage

The six networks we decode.

Where the network's link format carries the publisher ID, we extract it. Where it carries only click tokens, we resolve the account from the rest of the chain. Either way, what lands in your dossier is the number your affiliate manager needs to file a dispute.

Awin

awinaffid=

Publisher ID

Impact

irclickid=

Click Tracking

CJ Affiliate

cjevent=

Click Tracking

Adtraction

as=

Publisher ID

Webgains

siteid=

Publisher ID

PaidOnResults

porc=

Click Tracking

If your brand is being bid on through any of these networks, we pull the publisher ID out of the redirect chain and hand it to you with the screenshot, the ad copy, and the timestamp. No network relationship required.

The Cost of Not Looking

The leak is ongoing. Run your own numbers.

In our five-month corpus, 8 of the 10 most active offender domains were still running ads in the final 48 hours of the window. They persist because they're anonymous; identification is what ends it. Until then, the leak compounds monthly. Drop your numbers in and pick the scenario that fits your program.

Your inputs

Leak scenario5%

Conservative · Low coupon-search exposure

Monthly conversions3,500

How many sales come through your affiliate channel each month?

Average order value$80

Mean basket size in USD.

Commission rate25%

Average affiliate commission, % of sale value.

Monthly affiliate spend$70,000

Estimated leak · 5% of commission spend

$3,500per month

$42,000per year

AdCrime Pro · $449 / mo

Pays for itself in 4 days at this leak estimate.

Your free scan replaces this estimate with evidence.

Scenario rates are assumptions, not measurements. BrandVerity's published ceiling for unmonitored programs is 12%; coupon-heavy verticals can run higher. Adjust for your program's coupon exposure, network mix, and monitoring history.

Replace the estimate with evidence

The Deal

Free First Scan. 30-Day Full Refund. Evidence Is Yours Either Way.

In our pre-launch and early-access scans of active affiliate programs, every qualifying program surfaced unauthorized or likely-unauthorized bidders. The first scan is free - if we find nothing, you walk away with nothing lost.

If the evidence is worth paying for, you keep the monitoring on. And if in the next 30 days you want out - didn't find enough, don't like the reports, changed your mind, whatever - reply with the word refund. Every dollar back. No call. No form. No “let's hop on a quick sync.”

You keep every piece of evidence we surfaced. Forever. Even if you refund.

All I'm Asking Is That You Look.

Look - I'm not going to ask you to decide if this is worth it from a landing page. That would be insane. The whole point of AdCrime is that the fraud is invisible until somebody looks. So all I'm asking is that you let me look. Sign up, let us scan your program, and read the evidence we send you. If it's worth what we're charging, you keep it. If it isn't, you walk away - no questions, no card charge, no hard feelings.

“Day one or day thirty - if you're not happy, I'm not happy.”

That's the whole deal.

I Guarantee It.

- Mario Vaher
  Founder, AdCrime
  Rural Estonia

Introducing Sonar 2.0

Six Months in the Lab. Now Yours.

Sonar is our detection engine: the system that watches your brand across the world's search markets and follows every intercepted click back to the account being paid. For six months it ran quietly for a handful of brands. Sonar 2.0 opens it to everyone.

Wider reach

Coverage across every major search market, not a fixed list.

Sharper detection

More reliable across languages, regions, and ad formats.

Faster

Fresh case files in minutes once you are monitoring.

Public beta · included free in Pro, no upcharge

Pricing

One Confirmed Violator Can Cover the Plan.

The first scan is always free. If we find fraud and you subscribe, you have 30 days to walk for any reason. Keep the evidence either way.

Entry

Your First Look at the Damage

$149/mo

3,000 credits / month

Best for: Your first branded-search audit.

What you get

Affiliate IDs, networks, coupon codes
Screenshots + redirect chains
Deterministic evidence classification
3,000 scan credits / month
Global scan coverage
Unlimited domains
Daily / weekly email reports

One confirmed violator, with the evidence to act on it, can pay for the plan.

≈ Monitor 1 brand, 3 keywords, 3 markets, daily.

Free first scan + 30-day full refund

Start Monitoring →

Pro

New: Sonar 2.0Most popular

The Commission Recovery System

$449/mo

10,000 credits / month

Best for: Ongoing multi-market enforcement.

What you get

Everything in Entry
Sonar 2.0 detection enginePUBLIC BETA
C&D letter templates (lawyer-reviewed)
Adaptive evidence classificationIN DEVELOPMENT
10,000 scan credits / month
Priority scanning queue
CSV exports
Slack real-time alerts

Built to catch repeat offenders across markets, where most leaked commissions hide.

≈ Monitor 1 brand, 3 keywords, every major market, daily.

Free first scan + 30-day full refund

Start Monitoring →

Enterprise

The Full Perimeter

$999/mo

35,000 credits / month

Best for: Always-on coverage at scale.

What you get

Everything in Pro
Dispute-ready evidence packets
API access (FastAPI)
35,000 scan credits / month
Telegram priority support
Personalized scan coverage on demand

At portfolio scale, leaked commissions compound. Continuous coverage is the cheaper line item.

≈ Monitor up to 5 brands, every major market, daily.

Free first scan + 30-day full refund

Start Monitoring →

Comparable tools often start around $500+/mo, add crawling fees, require trials or demos, or bundle affiliate compliance into broader enterprise suites.

Agency

Running Multiple Brands? White-Label the Whole Thing.

Starts at

$2,499/mo

Built for agencies, holding companies, and ecommerce groups monitoring several brands at once. Custom quote, custom workflows, white-label everything.

Talk to us

Everything in Enterprise
Multi-brand dashboard (manage unlimited client brands)
White-label PDF reports (your logo on every dossier)
Unlimited team seats + role-based access
Dedicated account rep
Custom integrations and workflows
Quarterly executive reviews

Full report intelligence on every plan. Paid tiers buy scan volume and automation, not access to what we found. We will never sell you back your own evidence.

How Credits Work

Think in workloads, not credits: every plan card above shows what it covers in brands, keywords, markets, and cadence.

Under the hood, one keyword scanned in one market costs 10 credits per pass, with automatic volume discounts from the 4th keyword and market onward, plus a further discount on scheduled monitoring runs.

Unused subscription credits roll forward for one billing cycle.

Example workload

3 keywords, 3 markets, daily runs about 2,400 credits a month. That is why Entry ships 3,000.

Watching one brand across every major market, daily, fits comfortably inside Pro.

Enterprise exists for programs that want broad, always-on coverage without rationing usage.

Honest Filter

Who AdCrime Isn't For.

If any of these describe you, don't sign up. We'll save you a refund email and we'll save us a disappointed customer.

You don't run an affiliate program.

AdCrime only detects affiliates bidding on your brand. No affiliates, no fraud to detect. We're the wrong tool.

You have fewer than 20 active affiliates.

At that size you can audit your program manually in an afternoon. We become worth it around 20-30 active publishers.

Your monthly affiliate commissions are under $10K.

The exposure is real even at this scale, but the operational overhead of paid monitoring rarely justifies itself yet. Run manual spot checks until the program grows, then come back.

You want a demo call, a discovery session, and a 6-week procurement cycle.

Every tool on this page except ours offers that. We optimize for the affiliate manager who wants evidence in 24 hours, not a pipeline meeting.

Everyone else: run your free scan →

FAQ

Common Questions

Three things: 1. We show you full evidence upfront: your free scan includes affiliate IDs, redirect chains, screenshots, and network details. No sales call required to see what we find. 2. Our classification engine is deterministic: same input, same verdict, and every publisher ID is reproducible in your own network dashboard. An adaptive layer for edge cases is in development. 3. Pricing: enterprise suites in this category commonly run $500 to $1,200+ per month behind demo calls, and the nearest self-serve alternative starts at $199 with a keyword cap. AdCrime starts at $149/month with credit-based pricing and full API access on Enterprise.

Not reliably. This is one of the most expensive misunderstandings in the affiliate channel. Awin, Impact, CJ and the rest are paid as a percentage of commission volume. Every fraudulent commission that flows through their platform is also a commission they take a cut on. Their compliance teams are reactive: they act on specific evidence-backed complaints. They don’t run brand-specific surveillance on your behalf. AdCrime is the system that finds the complaints you’d otherwise miss, with the static publisher ID, the screenshot, the redirect chain, and the timestamp the network’s compliance process expects. Your team forwards the dossier. The network reviews and enforces according to its own process, contract, and evidence standard. Ben Edelman, who has studied affiliate compliance longer than anyone, documented a case where nine of a brand’s top ten affiliates were breaking program rules and the network had not flagged any of them. That isn’t a one-off. That’s the structural state of the industry.

It doesn't change what you receive. Every finding is what a real customer in that market saw: the affiliate's live ad on your brand term, its full redirect chain, and the tracking parameters the affiliate's own link carries. And every finding is independently reproducible. Run the same search yourself from that country, or look the publisher account ID up in your own network dashboard. You are verifying the affiliate's own public activity, not taking our word for anything.

This is what brand protection sounds like.

90 seconds. You'll understand everything we do.

Yes, it's a rap song. No, we're not sorry.

0:00--:--

Final Check

Ready to find out if affiliates are bidding on your brand?

Free scan. No credit card. Results in 24 hours. If the problem is real, you'll have proof worth acting on.

Get a Free Brand Scan

Questions? mario@adcrime.com