Affiliate marketing in India has grown into a significant channel for driving online commerce, but this growth has brought with it a malpractice that threatens the very foundation of the industry. One of the most damaging patterns emerging across the sector is the hijacking of branded search terms through paid advertising, especially on coupon-related queries.
Major publishers are bidding aggressively on combinations like Brand Name coupon or Brand Name promo code, capturing high-intent users who were already set to convert, and redirecting them through affiliate links that serve no meaningful value.
Coupon Publishers Are Weaponizing Paid Ads
The problem is not with coupon sites in general. The issue lies specifically with coupon publishers who depend entirely on paid ads to earn commissions. They rent traffic instead of earning it.
Their model is based on bidding for users already searching for the brand and then inserting themselves in between, purely to drop an affiliate cookie and claim credit for a sale they never helped initiate. These publishers are not growing the pie; they are taxing it.
Their pages offer nothing exclusive, often recycle public offers, and rarely provide accurate coupons. Yet they earn commission because they insert themselves at the last moment of the customer journey. This is not affiliate value creation. It is strategic interference funded by ad spend.
Ad Networks and Agencies Are Complicit
This tactic is thriving because ad networks and media agencies are directly enabling it. Many not only allow such campaigns but actively optimize them. Since networks earn on volume, and agencies are evaluated on performance metrics, they push campaigns that look good on paper regardless of how they were achieved.
They claim credit for sales, improve affiliate metrics, and push inflated numbers to brand dashboards. Meanwhile, the brand unknowingly pays commission on transactions it had already secured. These metrics look impressive to an untrained eye, but in reality they reflect a leak, not a lift.
Brand Managers Are Incentivized to Ignore the Damage
Shockingly, brand managers are increasingly aware of this behavior and still allow it. Why? Because it guarantees sales on their sheet with zero effort.
Campaign targets are met. Affiliate dashboards show conversion spikes. The management sees growth. Everyone upstream is satisfied, despite the fact that most of these sales would have happened anyway.
Instead of addressing the structural misuse of the channel, they accept it as a shortcut. It becomes a tradeoff growth without scrutiny. But this is not performance marketing. It is misattribution dressed as success.
Loss of Control Over Branded Search
The consequences are severe. Brands lose ownership of their own search results. Paid affiliate listings show above the brand’s own ads, increasing cost per click, diluting traffic quality, and reducing conversion rates on official pages.
Organic listings from the brand get pushed lower, while ad slots are filled by publishers who mimic brand language to appear official.
Users, unaware of the switch, click on affiliate ads expecting brand communication. Instead, they land on outdated coupon pages filled with expired codes or recycled offers. Trust erodes. Experience declines. The brand takes the hit, both financially and reputationally.
Couponzania.com: The Ethical Outlier
In this compromised ecosystem, Couponzania.com operates with a clean and content-driven approach. It remains the only major affiliate publisher in the Indian deals space that does not run any form of paid advertising. No brand keyword bidding. No ad-based arbitrage. Its traffic is earned through relevance, not rented through search engines.
Couponzania’s structure is built to support intent with useful content, match timing with user needs, and build performance through real influence not shortcut tactics. It reflects what affiliate marketing is meant to be: a value-generating partnership, not a transactional siphon.
A Structural Correction Is Urgently Needed
To restore integrity in the channel, brands must take control of affiliate governance. Contracts should prohibit paid brand keyword targeting. Monitoring tools should be used to flag violations instantly. Networks that allow hijacking must be audited.
Agencies must be evaluated on quality metrics, not volume alone. And clean publishers who build organic trust must be rewarded for their discipline. While banning publishers who practice unethical affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is still a powerful lever when used correctly. But the current model, fueled by paid coupon hijacking and incentivized negligence, is a slow collapse in plain sight.
If brands do not act with urgency, they will continue to pay for their own users, lose visibility on their own name, and erode the very trust they spent years building.
This is not growth. It is leakage. And it must be stopped at the source.
