Ad Hijacking Detection feature explained

Ad Hijacking Detection is an add-on feature of Adthena's fleet of Brand Protection solutions that helps detect illegitimate advertisements and identify the affiliate and imposter networks that are fraudulently earning commissions and clicks from your brand. See What is Ad Hijacking?  With easy, no-configuration automation, adaptive monitoring, and clear evidence-based reporting, Ad Hijacking Detection saves time, protects your revenue, and provides comprehensive coverage across major affiliate networks, including Impact, AWIN, and CJ.

The Ad Hijacking Detection feature is monitored at a national level. For your convenience, any local view accounts you have with us within the same country and using the same domain address will display the same national-level data. This ensures consistent and easy access to relevant information across all accounts within that region.

Once hijacking instances are detected, the table below will automatically populate with details for each case. Use the Download button on the far right to download the table as a CSV file, or click View Evidence next to any advertiser to see supporting evidence from the Google SERP for that specific ad hijacking instance.

KPI Tiles

At the top of the report, three summary tiles give you a snapshot of your current ad performance.

• Total Hijacks - The total number of hijacks we’ve seen throughout the selected date range.
• Unique Hijackers - The number of unique hijackers we’ve seen throughout the selected date range.
• Impersonation Rate - The median daily impersonation rate across the selected date range. This is your headline figure, the typical share of your monitored brand search that's being taken up by hijackers. This metric will populate if ad hijackers detected are displayed in the table as an Impersonator hijacker type, via the Detected threats toggle. High of X%: Shown below the main figure. This is the impersonation rate on your worst days within the selected range. Compare the two to see whether hijacking sits at a steady level or spikes on certain days.

Table Controls

• Detected Threats / All Advertisers - A toggle that filters the table to show only confirmed hijacking threats, as opposed to all detected activity.
• Download - Exports the current table data in CSV format.

Table Columns

• All Ad hijacking instances - The total number of ad hijacking instances we've seen throughout the selected date range.
• Advertiser Name - Shows the name of the advertiser associated with the detected ad hijacking instance.
• Hijacker Type - Indicates the classification of the entity responsible for the ad hijacking.
• Total Hijacks - The total number of hijacks we have seen for this advertiser.
• Number of Affiliate Networks - The total number of affiliate networks we have seen for this advertiser.
• First Seen - The date an ad hijack was first identified from this advertiser.
• Last Seen - The date the ad hijack was last identified from this advertiser.

• Advertister Category - A dropdown that lets you label and categorise an advertiser more accurately. Applying any category other than Ad Hijacker removes the advertiser from the Detected Threats tab and moving it to the All Advertisers tab, acting as an ignore function, excluding them from the table, KPI totals (Total Hijacks, Unique Hijackers, Impersonation Rate), and the daily trend chart going forward. The available categories are:

  • Ad Hijacker - The default classification for a detected threat. Advertiser remains visible in the hijacker tab.
  • Official - Marks the advertiser as an officially recognised advertiser for your brand.
  • Agency - Marks the advertiser as a known agency.
  • Seller - Marks the advertiser as a known seller.
  • Partner - Marks the advertiser as a known partner.

  Below you can see All Advertisers has been toggled, showing all advertisers.

  Note: Categorising an advertiser is not permanent. If your relationship with an advertiser changes, you can reset their category back to Ad Hijacker, and they will reappear in results via the Detected Threats section.

Click the chevron icon to expand and view more details:

• Affiliate network - Displays the name of the network through which the advertiser and publisher are connected.
• Affiliate ID - The unique string that can be used to identify who the affiliate or publisher link belongs to.

View Evidence

Clicking the hyperlink opens a new tab displaying the ad hijacking evidence from the Google SERP. At the bottom of the Ad Hijacking Detected box, you can view the redirect path leading to your URL. If you would like to download this evidence, you can press the Download button.