Playbook · Pillar guide
A complete operating model for protecting your brand on Amazon, marketplaces, and search — written for brands at $20M–$200M ARR. Covers what to detect, when to enforce, and the structural foundation that prevents brand-protection tooling from sabotaging your authorized retailer relationships.
~10 min read. Long-form, but each section links to deeper material if you want to skip ahead.
Brand protection used to be a single-channel problem: stop counterfeiters on Amazon. The category has fundamentally changed. Today, a mid-market DTC brand has to defend its distribution across Amazon, regional marketplaces, social commerce, paid search, grey-market diversion, and the long tail of unauthorized resellers — simultaneously, with limited team capacity, and without damaging the authorized retailer relationships that fund growth.
What works at Fortune 500 scale doesn't transfer cleanly. Enterprise brand-protection tools were built for budgets where false positives are absorbable; for mid-market DTC, a wrongful takedown on an authorized retailer can cost more than the violations the program was meant to remove. The right operating model is built around three commitments: comprehensive detection, human- in-the-loop enforcement, and a maintained authorized-dealer allow-list that prevents collateral damage.
For canonical definitions of every term used in this playbook, see the brand-protection glossary.
Five canonical violation types describe almost every brand-protection problem a mid-market DTC brand encounters. Each requires a different detection signal and a different enforcement playbook. Skim the summaries; click through for the complete tactical playbook on each.
Authorized retailers advertising your products below your Minimum Advertised Price floor. Detection is straightforward (compare published price against MAP); enforcement depends on a written, dated MAP policy your retailers acknowledged before they began selling, plus documented evidence (timestamped screenshots) of each violation.
How to respond to MAP violations →Genuine products diverted from authorized distribution channels. Common sources: cross-border distributor diversion, employee-discount arbitrage, dead-stock liquidation. Enforcement combines manufacturer's-right complaints (under "material differences" doctrine in many jurisdictions) and distribution-agreement enforcement once the diversion source is identified via batch-code tracing.
What is grey market on Amazon? →Third parties listing your product without a dealer agreement. The legal lever is generally weak (the first sale doctrine protects most unauthorized resale), so enforcement is structural — source-of-supply disruption, material-difference complaints, and selective Buy-Box defense. Most actionable when paired with an authorized-dealer safe list that distinguishes "unauthorized" from "approved partner you don't recognize."
Unauthorized sellers on Amazon →Fake products made by unauthorized manufacturers. The strongest legal framework of the five categories — counterfeit goods can be seized at customs, manufacturers face criminal liability, platform enforcement is most aggressive. Detection is the hard part: counterfeits surface across Amazon, regional marketplaces, social commerce, and paid search, often migrating channels after each takedown.
Counterfeit detection for DTC brands →Competitors purchasing your trademark as a paid-search keyword to intercept high-intent search traffic. In US case law, keyword targeting alone is generally permissible when the ad creative doesn't cause confusion; trademark use directly in ad copy is more clearly actionable. Detection requires multi-region, multi-device polling — a single check from your own location misses 80% of the activity.
Brand bidding on Google Ads →The single most overlooked discipline in brand protection — and the difference between programs that help and programs that hurt — is a maintained authorized-dealer safe list. It captures every legal entity name your authorized partners trade under, every marketplace storefront they operate, every domain they sell through, every Google Shopping merchant ID, their authorized geography, and their authorized product list.
Without it, brand-protection automation flags everything that isn't on a stale CRM list — and false-positive takedowns on legitimate authorized retailers can cost more than the violations the program was meant to remove. The lost retailer revenue, the relationship damage, and the liquidation-driven grey market that sometimes follows a wrongful suspension are all absorbable for a Fortune 500 enterprise. They are not absorbable at mid-market scale.
The authorized-dealer safe list: why it matters covers what a complete safe list captures, how to build and maintain one, and how it changes the detection workflow.
Brand-protection tooling is leverage on a discipline you already have, not a substitute for one. Three preconditions before software adds compounding value:
With those preconditions in place, automation moves you from sample-based detection to comprehensive coverage, from manual evidence assembly to ready-to-send packets, and from quarterly enforcement projects to continuous workflow. Pricelysis is built for brands at this stage — see pricing tiers or run a free audit to see your channel.
A realistic sequence for a brand starting from no formal program. Each phase produces a concrete artifact; software comes in phase 3, not phase 1.
Days 1–30
Document the MAP policy. Build the first version of the authorized-dealer safe list (every partner, every storefront, every domain). Get retailer acknowledgement signed. Audit current channels — Amazon, top three marketplaces, Google paid + organic — to size the backlog of existing violations.
Days 31–60
Write the enforcement decision tree. Define notice templates for MAP, unauthorized seller, grey market, and counterfeit cases. Run the first round of takedowns manually on the worst 20% of detected violations to validate the playbook end-to-end. Test-buy on suspect listings to verify counterfeit-vs-grey-market distinctions.
Days 61–90
Bring brand-protection software online with the safe list as the hard filter. Migrate from sample-based detection to comprehensive coverage across all five violation types. Establish weekly enforcement cadence with measurable resolution rates. Add the test-buy budget as a recurring line item, not a project.
Run a free brand audit. We'll scan your active SKUs against all five violation types and return a PDF showing every match — with timestamped evidence.