Marketing Sazonal
Mother's Day 2026: how fraudsters exploit the date to deceive consumers and brands
Branddi ·
Mother's Day is the second-biggest digital retail date in Brazil, second only to Black Friday. In 2025, e-commerce moved around R$ 7 billion during the period, according to Neotrust, with projected double-digit growth again in 2026. Along with the sales peak comes another peak: digital fraud targeting the most-searched brands.
For fraudsters, the date is a rare opportunity. High search volume, emotional urgency from consumers, and brands investing heavily in paid media form the perfect scenario for domain cloning, fake ads, fake profiles, and phishing campaigns. The result is direct: part of the marketing budget of legitimate brands ends up financing criminals.
This article shows how these scams operate, the real impact on your brand's results, and which preventive actions ensure that media investment generates sales — not waste.
What to expect from Mother's Day 2026 in e-commerce
The date is the first major movement in the retail calendar for the first half of the year. Categories like beauty, fashion, perfumery, jewelry, and electronics concentrate most of the revenue, with average ticket above other commemorative dates, according to data from ABComm.
In 2026, expectations are for significant growth again, driven by live commerce, social commerce, and search engine campaigns. The term "Mother's Day" alone surpasses 670,000 monthly searches during the period, turning brand keywords into highly valuable — and highly contested — assets.
The main scams that grow before Mother's Day
The first is brand bidding, where third parties — including competitors and opportunistic affiliates — buy ads using your brand name on Google Ads. The consumer searching for you is redirected to another site, your CPC inflates, and part of the sales is lost along the way.
In parallel, clone sites multiply. Domains with small spelling variations or alternative TLDs visually copy the official store, capture consumer data, and in many cases process payments without delivering products.
On social media, the most common scam is the creation of fake profiles posing as the brand, advertising "exclusive Mother's Day promotions" and directing consumers to WhatsApp, where the fraud is completed via instant payment.
The numbers of fraud during commemorative dates
Reports from Procon-SP show that complaints linked to fake sites grow more than 40% in the two weeks preceding commemorative dates. This means brand shielding work must start before the peak — ideally 30 to 45 days before the date.
The direct impact of fraud on your brand's results
The damage from fraud is not limited to the deceived consumer. For the brand, the effect is triple:
- Increased CPC on paid campaigns
- Drop in conversion rate
- Reputational damage
On dates like Mother's Day, this impact is multiplied.
Brand shielding checklist for Mother's Day
Protection begins with continuous monitoring of:
- New suspicious domains
- Unauthorized sponsored ads
- Social media profiles imitating the brand
- Movements in the Buy Box of major marketplaces
After monitoring comes fast takedown — removing threats from the platforms.
Arrive at Mother's Day with your brand protected
Mother's Day is one of the biggest sales opportunities of the year and, at the same time, one of the moments of maximum brand exposure to fraudsters. Brands that arrive shielded protect not only the consumer, but primarily their own marketing results.
Branddi monitors and removes threats against your brand before they reach your customer. Brand bidding, fake sites, clone profiles, irregular ads, and sellers outside the standard are identified and handled before the sales peak, ensuring your operation reaches the date with a clean channel.
Request a free diagnosis of your brand →
See, in a few days, where the threats are that could compromise your Mother's Day 2026.