Cyber Monday 2025: How to protect your brand from the digital attacks that come after Black Friday

Cyber Monday was born in 2005 in the United States as a “second round” of offers for those who had not yet shopped on Black Friday, and quickly became a global phenomenon. In 2025, Cyber Monday falls on December 1st, and everything indicates that it will be one of the largest ever registered in the country.

But along with this growth comes a side effect: the more consumers go into “bargain hunting” mode, the more the digital ecosystem becomes fertile ground for Scams online.

Second dice from TransUnion, 4.6% of all e-commerce transactions worldwide were identified as suspected online scam attempts during the days leading up to Cyber Monday.

If you want to understand what your brand needs to do to get through post-Black Friday without losing margin or reputation, check out the complete guide below!

What are the biggest threats to your brand on Cyber Monday?

To understand where the greatest risks lie and how these attacks actually happen, check out the main threats that hit brands the most during Cyber Monday below.

Paid traffic diversion

Paid traffic diversion, also called Ads hijacking, is one of the most dangerous and harmful scams for the brands used as targets.

It works like this: competitors (or opportunistic partners) Buy your brand's search term from us sponsored links. They place the ad above its official result and intercept the user in the funnel's most valuable millisecond: the moment of the direct search.

This hijacking of intent works because the consumer, on days of mega-offers, is clicking without looking twice.

Fake pages

Fake pages are the preferred gateway for scams on high-volume dates. In this case, the criminal sets up a convincing version of an official landing page, copying the layout, fonts, color palette, and even the brand's copywriting style.

During Cyber Monday, these pages gain even more strength because users are conditioned to act fast, and the fraudster exploits exactly that behavior.

Fake pages often appear boosted on Instagram, TikTok Ads, Google Display, and even via shady affiliate networks. They use classic triggers such as extreme urgency, falling inventory, exclusive coupons, and unrealistic discounts.

Brand misuse in advertisements and products

In this case, third parties use your logo, slogan, color palette, and even true reviews to drive ads that have nothing to do with the brand. Such brand misuse appears a lot on social networks, display, and content apps.

The user receives an advertisement similar to the official one and buys products of dubious origin. The result? Loss of control over communication, dilution of brand equity, and risk of connections with pirated items.

Unauthorized sellers on marketplaces

The pressure for a low price opens space for sellers who They have nothing to do with the brand, but they use official photos and descriptions to appear legitimate.
These sellers can sell:

• Counterfeit products;
• Items of dubious origin;
• Outdated or unwarranted versions.

The result: complaints, negative reviews, and a drop in reputation fall on the brand, even if it has no responsibility for the sale.

Remarketing and phishing scams with fake offers

Criminals exploit pixels, cookies, and audience lists to simulate remarketing campaigns, displaying fake ads that appear legitimate.

These phishing campaigns trigger emails and messages with “exclusive Cyber Monday deals” directing the user to malicious links. The consumer believes they are completing an official purchase, but they land on pages created to steal data.

How to keep digital shielding active?

Cyber Monday is the type of date when the brand must operate in “full shielding mode”. Strategies to keep this protection working:

Review paid media campaigns and exclude unfair competition

Shielding requires a full review of Google Search, Google Shopping, Meta Ads, TikTok Ads, and YouTube Ads channels:

• Apply lists of Negative Keywords;
• Identify advertisers who buy your brand terms;
• Activate Brand Protection Exclusion on the platforms that support the feature;
• Review reports from Auction Insights and Share of Voice;
• Check for side ads using the brand name or variants.

Monitor marketplaces and social networks for suspicious mentions

Digital shielding also depends on a continuous scan of the main recruitment, relationship and sales channels. The continuous assessment should find:

• Suspicious mentions of the brand name;
• Products that are irregularly priced or inconsistent with the MSRP;
• Sellers that are not part of the official ecosystem;
• Ads using the brand's visual identity without permission;
• Pages that mimic the brand to capture data.

Activate automatic alerts for brand misuse

Speed is the critical factor of Cyber Monday. A fake ad can reach thousands of people in minutes. Therefore, relying solely on manual verification is insufficient.

The ideal is to activate automated alerts based on:

• detection of logos and visual elements of the brand;
• monitoring of similar domains (Typosquatting and Lookalike Domains);
• programmatic network tracking of suspicious campaigns;
• triggering alerts when hashtags, product names, or visual identity appear outside authorized channels.

Ensure that consumers find only official channels

The shielding is only complete when the consumer is taken to the official ecosystem of the brand. On dates like Cyber Monday, this involves:

• Review SEO and ensure that the official site dominates brand searches;
• Strengthen snippets, sponsored links, and ad extensions with official URLs;
• Validate verified profiles on social networks;
• update Store pages on marketplaces with official stamps, seller badges, and proprietary content;
• Reinforce institutional campaigns by indicating the correct channels and warning against scams.

Why is continuous monitoring the true differentiator?

The determining factor for the loss of margin and reputation is not the volume of scams during Black Friday/Cyber Monday, but the lack of visibility about what happens while the campaigns are active.

Cases of traffic diversion, improper advertisements, and irregular sellers exist year-round, and what changes on major dates is the speed of the attacks.

Within hours, fake links may have launched paid traffic campaigns, cloned pages captured customer data, competitors inflated your CPC by buying your name, and unauthorized sellers compromised your reputation on marketplaces.

Without real-time monitoring, the brand only sees the scam after the customer complains. And when a customer complains, the damage is already consolidated: emotional churn, a crisis of trust, and a layer of noise that is difficult to circumvent.

That's why many brands are using the Branddi platform. Our solution monitors 24/7 to provide you with alerts about:

• Misuse of your brand in search engines, marketplaces, social networks and domains;
• Irregular ads, fake pages, unauthorized sellers, and improper brand term purchases.

Through Branddi, you can also activate automatic response flows to eliminate violations, reduce losses, and preserve the consumer experience.

Did you like the tips to face Cyber Monday? Then, it's worth taking the next step and delving into the strategies so as not to lose customers in the midst of the peak of digital scams.

Branddi has prepared a complete brand safety guide for the protection of its channels. Click here and check out our recommendations to strengthen your brand!

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