How to Combat Infringement Surges During the Holiday Season

The holiday season brings a surge of infringements across marketplaces and social media. To keep up with this increased seasonal activity, it’s critical that brand protection strategies are both flexible and targeted to priority platforms.

The holiday period is the most important quarter of the year for many brands, with consumers splurging on products ranging from fashion and luxury goods to electronics, toys, and homeware.

Every year, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Singles’ Day combine to generate billions in revenue globally. However, these e-commerce events are all targeted by unscrupulous bad actors looking to make a quick profit out of unsuspecting consumers.

Read on to learn about the tactics deployed by infringers during the holiday season, examples of surges brands face, and how you can adapt to protect your brand effectively.

Table of contents:

• Seasonal tactics used by infringers
• Q4 holiday season infringement trends
• How to combat seasonal infringement
• eBook: A complete guide to seasonal infringement

Seasonal tactics used by infringers

Deploying the same tactics as legitimate businesses, bad actors will host flash sales, short campaigns, and price promotions to increase visibility and drive sales. They will relist products regularly to avoid enforcement and push their products to the top of search results on marketplaces.

Key trends during this period include:

Counterfeiters focusing on social media and marketplaces

Marketplace listings require less setup time compared to websites, making them ideal for the quick and widespread sale of counterfeit goods.

But seasonal infringement also stretches far beyond marketplaces, with social media used as a means to reach a wider audience under less scrutiny from platform operators. Indeed, brands are finding it increasingly difficult to consistently remove infringements from platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) due to lack of moderation resource and lowering compliance.

Bolder IP infringement

In the holiday season, IP infringement becomes more blatant. Listings often include trademarks and copyrighted images, as bad actors prioritize quick sales over longevity. While these listings are eventually removed, the damage is often already done, with counterfeiters moving significant volumes to bargain-seeking consumers. To counter this, the use of advanced image recognition technology and continuous enforcement is vital, as throwaway accounts make it easy for infringers to resurface quickly.

Relisting at speed

A common tactic during the holiday rush is the rapid removal and reuploading of listings. This constant relisting is designed to maintain visibility, as counterfeiters vie for limited digital space and aim to appear above their competitors. Some platforms indirectly encourage this behavior by offering features that allow frequent relisting without enhanced scrutiny.

Targeting younger audiences

Counterfeit listings aimed at younger demographics are often crafted to grab attention with vibrant colors, emojis, and dynamic images. These tactics overwhelm consumers with information, creating an urgency to act. Vape products illustrate this trend, showcasing how visual appeal is leveraged to attract a youthful audience.

Heavy use of sponsored listings

Paid promotions see a sharp increase during the holiday season. Counterfeiters aggressively promote their products not only to compete with legitimate brands but also among themselves. The objective is to maximize visibility before listings are removed or sales events conclude.

Exploiting gray markets

Parallel imports and other gray market threats see a rise during this period. This involves the sale of goods outside a brand's authorized distribution channels or in contravention of local regulations. Unauthorized resellers—or even authorized sellers operating outside their designated territories—capitalize on price fluctuations and unmet demand in regions where brands have limited presence.

Scams on the rise

While most bad actors focus on marketplaces and social media to make a quick buck during the holiday season, more sophisticated operations will launch targeted phishing campaigns. They harness fake websites, emails, and social media ads to mimic legitimate brands and deceive consumers into revealing personal and financial information. Brand impersonation is central to these scams, creating a facade of authenticity to exploit the influx of online shoppers.

Social media is a particularly fertile ground for scams targeting younger audiences, with flashy visuals, emoji-heavy captions, and too-good-to-be-true offers. These techniques are designed to overwhelm users and prompt impulsive engagement, exposing them to malicious links.

For brands, these scams have serious consequences, from reputational harm to increased enforcement expenses. Vigilance and proactive measures are essential to mitigate these risks and protect consumers during this critical shopping period.

Q4 holiday season infringement trends

Brands lose $74 billion every year due to online sellers offering fake products[1]. Around 4% of the sellers behind these fake product listings are repeat sellers, who operate despite receiving warnings not to[2].

A spike in high-risk infringement activity was detected for many Corsearch customers during the 2024 holiday season (covering October, November, and December). On marketplaces, there was an average 26% increase in detected infringements in Q4 2024 versus Q3 2024 across all brands.

Listed below are the largest increases in marketplace enforcement in Q4 2024 in comparison to Q3 2024 for individual brands:

• Homeware brand: 577% increase
• Automotive brand: 127% increase
• Industrial & automotive lubricants brand: 116% increase
• UK football club: 67% increase

Listed below are the largest increases in social media enforcement in Q4 2024 in comparison Q3 2024 for individual brands:

• Luxury fashion brand: 981% increase
• Outdoor apparel brand: 949% increase
• Medical device & healthcare brand: 158% increase
• Luxury fashion brand: 152% increase

How to combat seasonal infringement

The holiday season brings an increase in counterfeit activity and other IP risks, but with the right tools and strategies, you can take control of your online presence, protect your customers, and safeguard your reputation.

Proactive strategy

By taking proactive steps and focusing your efforts, you can prevent a significant percentage of infringing listings from going live on priority marketplaces. Brands can work directly with platforms to ensure listings that contain high-risk keywords and imagery can be proactively blocking before going live. You can also help platforms to identify and block repeat infringers who continuously flout IP laws and platform policies.

Remove counterfeits at scale

You can save time and effort by leveraging AI-driven technology to identify and remove counterfeit listings quickly. By automatically matching features, images, and logos, AI tools help you detect fraudulent products across global marketplaces, allowing you to act swiftly and decisively.

Learn more about removing counterfeits at scale >

Disrupt the source of counterfeits

Going beyond removing listings, you can focus on addressing the root cause of counterfeit activity. By investigating the associated individuals, networks, and locations, you can take targeted action to disrupt operations that cause the most harm to your brand and customers.

Learn more about investigating the source >

Track authorized sellers and gray market activity

With the right monitoring tools, you can gain full visibility into gray market activity and compliance breaches by authorized sellers. This allows you to enforce local regulations or platform-specific policies and ensure your resale policies are being followed, helping you maintain control over your distribution network.

Learn more about stopping gray market goods >

eBook: Holiday Season Brand Protection: A True 360° Consumer View

As more businesses participate in seasonal events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the opportunities for bad actors to trick, scam, and steal potential revenue and profits away from your brand increase.

Our eBook ‘Holiday Season Brand Protection: A True 360° Consumer View’ is your comprehensive guide to navigating the challenges that bad actors present across global marketplaces and capitalizing on the opportunities that arise during the year’s most critical period.

Read on to learn how bad actors exploit seasonality, jumping on any surge in popularity of targeted brands — and further insights on how you can fight back effectively.

References

[1] Brands Losing 74 Billion Online Fakes (Corsearch, 2023)

[2] Three Strikes: Revisited (Corsearch, 2023)