Insights from Marta Guerreiro, Sales Executive at SnapDragon Monitoring
Social media platforms have become the fastest-moving battlefield for brand protection.
What began as discovery and engagement channels are now full-blown marketplaces – and prime targets for counterfeiters, scammers, and impersonators.
Social media platforms are now where identity, commerce, and community collide. Algorithms reward visibility instead of authenticity, so infringers can reach millions of buyers overnight. When one fake account is taken down, another can reappear within hours: often on a different platform or under a slightly altered name.
From TikTok to Instagram, bad actors are targeting consumers directly: using the same tools and trends that brands rely on to grow.
Signs your brand protection on social media is falling short
- Customers are spotting fakes before you do. If customers are flagging impersonators or scam ads before your team sees them, your monitoring net is too narrow.
- Replica ads are circulating without takedown action. Widespread copycat promotions suggests your detection scope is missing paid media and secondary channels.
- Teams are disconnected. When marketing, legal, and security operate in silos, threats slip through the cracks.
- Focus is limited to owned accounts. True damage often starts in hashtags, mentions, and conversations outside your control.
Marta Guerreiro works with global brands every day to help them stay ahead of emerging threats. Here, she shares five lessons for brand protection leaders who want to stay one step ahead.
1. Scammers are evolving faster than platforms can respond
Artificial intelligence (AI) has made deception scalable. The quality of counterfeits has never looked more convincing: and that realism now extends far beyond brand impersonation and fake websites.
On social media, scammers are generating entire ecosystems of fakery: deepfake influencer videos, synthetic endorsements, cloned review pages, and product imagery that can fool even the most loyal and experienced customers.
Deepfake ads, for instance, have already appeared across Meta and X (formerly Twitter), showing well-known founders endorsing products they’ve never seen. Because ad approval systems are largely automated, these campaigns can run for hours – sometimes days – before detection.
With these advances in tech, threat actors are exploiting policy gaps and platform loopholes to reach consumers faster than most enforcement teams can react.
“Scammers are adapting faster than platforms can enforce, and potential buyers are not yet fully educated about all the ways they can face financial harm online.”
Strategic takeaway: Build proactive brand protection on social media that detects early signals of abuse (e.g. sudden spikes in tagged mentions, unfamiliar product links in influencer comments, or identical ad creatives appearing across multiple unofficial pages) before the threat spreads across campaigns or countries.
2. Social media platforms are essentially online marketplaces
Social channels have blurred the line between inspiration and transaction. What started as product discovery is now full-scale e-commerce, with features like in-app checkout, live shopping, and shoppable posts turning social feeds into storefronts.
Bad actors have adapted quickly. Marta has noticed them using the same ad targeting and engagement algorithms that brands rely on to put counterfeit goods directly in front of real customers.
On Meta, for example, infringers exploit look-alike audiences to target users who already follow a brand’s official pages. TikTok sellers use trending sounds and product tags to redirect viewers to fake websites, often disguised behind shortened URLs that hide the real domain names.
“Social media has become not just a discovery channel but also a shopping destination,” says Marta. “Counterfeiters and impersonators are targeting buyers directly where they’re making purchasing decisions.”
The result is a sophisticated ecosystem where consumers think they’re buying from you, until they realise they’ve been scammed. It also plays into a wider cultural trend known as TikTok’s #Dupe Effect, where imitation is normalised and intellectual property is threatened in plain sight.
For brand protection leaders, that makes collaboration with marketing non-negotiable. Paid media, legal, and IP enforcement teams need to work together to close the loop between where the brand advertises and where the fraud appears.
“Counterfeiters and impersonators are targeting buyers directly where they’re making purchasing decisions.”
Strategic takeaway: Treat social like an extension of your eCommerce risk surface. Align brand protection with performance marketing to monitor ads, hashtags, and influencer collaborations in real time.
3. Coded, decentralised, and AI-driven scams are the new frontier
Online counterfeiting no longer hides in plain sight. It hides in code, culture, and private channels. Across TikTok, Discord, and Telegram, replica networks are operating like micro-communities, using slang, emojis, and encrypted spreadsheets to sell everything from luxury fashion to electronics.
Marta has seen this pattern first-hand:
“Sellers are using coded, youthful dialects—sometimes just emojis—to mask offers,” Marta says. “It’s highly organised, decentralised, and much harder to flag through traditional monitoring.”
“It’s highly organised, decentralised, and much harder to flag through traditional monitoring.”
She explains a single TikTok post might look like a harmless meme or product review, but the caption’s emoji string — 🧃🧢💸, for instance — signals the availability of replicas. Viewers are directed to a spreadsheet catalogue listing dozens of brands and SKUs, each linked to private chat groups where sales are finalised.
These files are hosted on shared drives, updated daily, and cross-promoted across multiple accounts. Because no brand names or prices appear in the original post, automated moderation systems simply don’t see these counterfeit product listings.
The same tactics spill into Discord servers and Telegram channels, where sellers distribute catalogues disguised as fan or resale groups. AI chatbots are even being tested to mimic legitimate customer service interactions, making the fraud feel more authentic and harder to detect.
This decentralised model outsmarts keyword filters and slips straight past image recognition software. Scammers are no longer broadcasting their offers: they’re whispering them in coded dark web networks that spread faster than takedown systems can track.
Strategic takeaway: Move beyond keyword detection and image recognition. Layer in behavioural and relational monitoring to track how accounts interact, not just what they post. Combine AI pattern detection with human investigation to expose networks that algorithms alone can’t see.
4. Technology by itself isn’t enough: human expertise makes it effective
AI delivers the scale that brand protection on social media demands, scanning thousands of social media accounts and posts every minute. But scale without sense is just noise. Machines can spot anomalies, but humans understand intent.
Fraud on social media is nuanced, and often disguised as legitimate engagement. A human analyst can recognise when a “fan page” is really a replica hub, or when a trending sound is being used to smuggle replica links into viral content. They can interpret cultural context, language shifts, and even humour – subtleties that algorithms miss.
As Marta explains, “an effective strategy means combining technology that scans continuously across platforms with a human team who can verify, escalate, and act.”
That human layer also builds relationships with platforms, legal teams, and e-commerce sites to accelerate verified takedowns and share intelligence across regions. It’s how enforcement turns from a reactive task into a coordinated operation.
“An effective strategy means combining technology that scans continuously across platforms with a human team who can verify, escalate, and act.”
Strategic takeaway: Invest in hybrid protection. For example SnapDragon’s brand protection software pairs AI-driven scale with human insight to create protection that’s fast, decisive, and impossible to outsmart.
5. Brand protection isn’t a cost, it’s revenue protection
Treating brand protection as a discretionary cost is a mistake. Every fake listing, scam ad, or impersonation siphons potential revenue, erodes consumer trust, and weakens the impact of genuine marketing.
“It’s important to treat brand protection not as a cost centre, but as an investment,” Marta stresses. “Protecting brand integrity directly protects the bottom line.”
According to Marta, brands that measure the impact of enforcement see tangible returns — from reduced consumer complaints to stronger engagement on verified pages. Proactive takedowns protect marketing investment, keep consumers buying from authentic sources, and prevent counterfeit diversion before it damages trust.
She recommends tracking KPIs such as the volume of infringements removed, the reduction in customer complaints, and the uplift in sentiment and trust across official social channels. Together, these metrics tell a story of brand resilience and recovered revenue.
If budgets are limited, Marta recommends focusing first on the platforms where customers are most likely to be deceived. “For many brands, that means starting with Instagram and Facebook,” she adds.
Strategic takeaway: Align brand protection with commercial goals. When protection is tied to metrics like sales integrity, customer satisfaction, and brand equity, it moves from a cost line to a growth driver.
What strong brand protection looks like
- Always-on technology, backed by a human team who can verify, escalate and act.
- Clear internal processes so when infringements are found, they are dealt with immediately and consistently.
- Consumer education. An informed audience is harder for counterfeiters to exploit.
- Dedicated budget and focus. Protection isn’t an add-on, it’s a core function that safeguards brand reputation and revenue.
The bigger picture
Social platforms are evolving into complex retail ecosystems where visibility, trust and revenue intersect. For brands with global audiences, brand protection on social media can no longer be a quarterly task or a reactive clean-up. It needs to be continuous, scalable, and grounded in human insight.
Scammers will keep adapting. Algorithms will keep shifting. The brands that stay one step ahead will be those that evolve faster — combining intelligent automation with human expertise to act decisively.
SnapDragon’s hybrid approach of AI detection backed by expert analysts helps the world’s most respected brands protect what they’ve built, without slowing their growth.
Protecting your brand isn’t just about defence, it’s about building the confidence to grow at full speed.
Marta Guerreiro
SnapDragon | Sales Executive
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