Black Friday Warning: Don’t Let Affiliate Fraud Steal Your Profits

Black Friday is here. Marketers are rushing to their positions.

You know who else is rushing to their positions? Fraudsters.

The holiday shopping event is one of the most fraud-rife weekends of the year. A startling 77% of Black Friday spam emails were identified as dangerous scams. In 2023, British consumers lost over £11.5 million in scams over the Black Friday period. And most of these schemes are targeted at US consumers.

All that’s to say, these scams are big business and big money. They are ubiquitous. As a consumer, you must be vigilant and discerning in your navigation of deals this weekend.

As affiliate marketers, you will also need to stay alert…

It’s the most corrupt time of the year

Consumers aren’t the only ones being tricked out of their money this weekend. The same is happening to brands too.

Black hat affiliates practising PPC fraud, click farms, and who-knows-what-else, will be taking advantage of the holiday frenzy to slip under the radar and make a lot of illegitimate money – stolen straight out of advertisers’ pockets.

In 2021, AdPolice monitored a 30% increase in affiliate fraud over the holiday season.