#ecommerceintelligencesolution

Ramadan reshapes daily life in the MENA region, and quick commerce brands feel the impact instantly. 

It is a period of cultural reset – daily routines change, eating schedules shift, social gatherings become more frequent than usual, and everyone plans their days around Iftar and late-night meals. This further changes how people shop, especially on ecommerce platforms. They expect deliveries in minutes, not hours or days.  

But speed is not the only thing that matters at this time. During Ramadan, quick commerce platforms become a necessity.

Smart TVs and smartphones have become festive must-haves. Whether it’s upgrading to a bigger screen or gifting the latest model to a loved one, consumers look for these products more frequently during the festive season.

This year, shoppers weren’t just chasing the biggest discounts; they were looking for trusted brands, better value, and convenience. With product comparisons, reviews, and flash deals just a click away, decisions were made faster and smarter.

And that’s where the real competition began. The festive sale wasn’t only about who priced their products better; it was about which brands appeared first, who stayed visible at the right time, and who managed to stay on top of consumer searches when intent was at its peak.

To find this out, our ecommerce analytics team at mFilterIt dived deep into two of the most competitive segments — smartphone and smart TV, to uncover which brands dominated visibility and how they did it to win consumer attention across the leading marketplaces — Amazon and Flipkart.

Digital Shelf in India, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and USA.

Brands constantly strive to capture consumer attention and dominate search engine results. One of the tactics used in (Pay-Per-click) PPC Advertising is Brand Bidding, where advertisers bid on brand-related keywords to appear at the top of search engine results. While brand bidding can be a legitimate marketing strategy, it also poses significant challenges for brand owners when misused by competitors and affiliates. 

This blog aims to provide legal scrutiny into brand bidding, a look at some issues advertisers should know about, and ways to discover and act against unethical practices in brand bidding. 

Is Bidding on Brand Keywords Legal? 

In PPC advertising, brand bidding means the act of bidding by an advertiser, which can also be a competitor, on branded keywords of a particular brand. Generally, it is considered as a legal practice. However, some fraudulent affiliates use brand bidding as a practice to divert a brand’s organic traffic through them. As a result, the brand must pay for the traffic to affiliate which might have reached their website organically.  

Why Advertisers Should Be Concerned About Brand Bidding 

Brand bidding, when misused, damages marketing budgets and brand equity. The following are the main issues with this kind of practice: 

Increased Cost-Per-Click (CPCs) 

The consequence could lead to further CPC increases on the brand owners when other players, such as competitors and unauthorized affiliates, bid on their keywords. Increased competition over a brand's keywords pushes the price the advertisers must pay to get their first rank in the ad placement; hence, the advertisements can indeed be too expensive.  

Customer Confusion & Misleading Clicks 

Brand bidding often creates confusing ads whose form might entice users to be confused. This gets aided by a potential user who clicks an ad he thinks to be the original brand when he is doing so to look for the new brand. And this is loss of traffic, resulting in a bad customer experience. Sometimes, misleading ad tactics lead customers to buy from unauthorized sellers, which inevitably feeds on brand reputation and trust. 

Unethical Practices of the Affiliates 

Some affiliates exploit brand bidding and collect credit for sales that should not come naturally or themselves. They place bids for the brand terms as keywords and track with their links. Thus, they obtain commissions for conversions which are not theirs. Such affiliate fraud engorges the significant expense of marketing and creates distortion in acknowledgment within proper performance tracking. 

How to Detect and Prevent Affiliate Brand Bidding 

Parties subject to brand bidding can have predetermined mechanisms for detection and strategic enforcement against such practice. Please give some effective methods for the detection and prevention of this unethical brand-bidding practice: 

Brand Monitoring Tools and AI-Driven Detection 

One can invest in brand monitoring tools to monitor unauthorized bidding on brand keywords. AI-driven detection solutions like Ecommerce Intelligence Solution by mFilterIt continuously scan search engine result pages to identify brand keyword violations in real-time and determine those who bid on competitors' trademarks. This gives a prompt insight for brands to adjust and take faster actions to resolve the situation. 

Enforcement of Affiliate Policy and Compliance Checks 

A regular compliance audit is held, so that an affiliate policy is enforced. The affiliate agreement states that partners cannot bid on brand keywords without formal permission from the brand. Instead, active monitoring of affiliate activities is done by the brand. Brands must work with affiliate networks to impose penalties in case of violations. 

Conclusion 

E-commerce intelligence is helping online businesses by offering real-time customer behavior, competitor strategies, and market trends to the firms. Digital Shelf Analytics is an important means to optimize product listings which helps the product to stand out in the online competition, while Pricing Analysis helps the business to follow the competitors and market prices in real-time, thus enabling them to adjust prices to maximize profit.