Skip to main content

Audience Hijacking Disrupts the Web Experience

Audience hijacking is a widespread phenomenon that is estimated to disrupt up to 15% of e-commerce site visits, according to a survey conducted by Akamai Technologies and Retail Dive.

To enhance their in-browser experiences, many shoppers now install browser extensions, plug-ins, or other browser widgets to help find coupons or offer price comparisons. Sometimes these browser extensions are unknowingly installed on the consumer's device for malicious purposes and can divert visitors away from their intended journey, allowing competitors and malicious actors to disrupt e-commerce experiences.

The three main findings of the survey include:

Retailers are aware of hijacking

Retailers understand that audience hijacking is a big problem. A significant majority of survey participants (85%) said they were at least somewhat familiar with the concept of audience hijacking. As many as 72% said that they were very or extremely familiar with it. This finding highlights the fact that, at least among stakeholders within midsize to large retail organizations, there is broad awareness of the problem.

When asked whether audience hijacking presented a major challenge to their organization, a large majority (82%) of survey participants generally agreed that it was.

Retailers lack visibility

Retailers lack visibility into exactly what's going on during site visits. This is particularly in terms of extensions, pop-ups and scripts running within the customer's browser.

Although today's retailers invest heavily in every aspect of digital experience management, they're still unable to explain why a large number of cart abandonments occur.

As many as 82% of respondents say they lack visibility into the causes of cart abandonment for 5% of online transactions or more, or they simply don't know how often shopping carts are abandoned for reasons they can't determine. Of this group, 30% cannot explain cart abandonment for up to 24% of user sessions — a significant number of lost customer conversions.

Retailers underestimate the impact

Due to a lack of visibility, retailers tend to underestimate the likelihood that audience hijacking is causing churn. The survey results support this, showing 15% of participants said that audience hijacking wasn't a major challenge for their organization, yet 90% were seeing user sessions disrupted by such activities. Some admitted that they entirely lacked visibility into audience hijacking's prevalence.

But audience hijacking clearly continues to have a major impact on retailers with 28% of respondents reporting that its biggest impact is revenue loss.

A further 23% say that it is compromising ROI on digital marketing investments.

Nearly one-quarter of respondents (23%) indicate that audience hijacking has diminished their customers' loyalty, and 17% say it's causing fewer shoppers to make repeat purchases from their e-commerce stores.

Methodology: The survey respondents included more than 75 digital marketing, IT security and technology leaders in retail or e-commerce organizations with at least 1,000 employees.

Hot Topics

The Latest

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

Today, organizations are generating and processing more data than ever before. From training AI models to running complex analytics, massive datasets have become the backbone of innovation. However, as businesses embrace the cloud for its scalability and flexibility, a new challenge arises: managing the soaring costs of storing and processing this data ...

Audience Hijacking Disrupts the Web Experience

Audience hijacking is a widespread phenomenon that is estimated to disrupt up to 15% of e-commerce site visits, according to a survey conducted by Akamai Technologies and Retail Dive.

To enhance their in-browser experiences, many shoppers now install browser extensions, plug-ins, or other browser widgets to help find coupons or offer price comparisons. Sometimes these browser extensions are unknowingly installed on the consumer's device for malicious purposes and can divert visitors away from their intended journey, allowing competitors and malicious actors to disrupt e-commerce experiences.

The three main findings of the survey include:

Retailers are aware of hijacking

Retailers understand that audience hijacking is a big problem. A significant majority of survey participants (85%) said they were at least somewhat familiar with the concept of audience hijacking. As many as 72% said that they were very or extremely familiar with it. This finding highlights the fact that, at least among stakeholders within midsize to large retail organizations, there is broad awareness of the problem.

When asked whether audience hijacking presented a major challenge to their organization, a large majority (82%) of survey participants generally agreed that it was.

Retailers lack visibility

Retailers lack visibility into exactly what's going on during site visits. This is particularly in terms of extensions, pop-ups and scripts running within the customer's browser.

Although today's retailers invest heavily in every aspect of digital experience management, they're still unable to explain why a large number of cart abandonments occur.

As many as 82% of respondents say they lack visibility into the causes of cart abandonment for 5% of online transactions or more, or they simply don't know how often shopping carts are abandoned for reasons they can't determine. Of this group, 30% cannot explain cart abandonment for up to 24% of user sessions — a significant number of lost customer conversions.

Retailers underestimate the impact

Due to a lack of visibility, retailers tend to underestimate the likelihood that audience hijacking is causing churn. The survey results support this, showing 15% of participants said that audience hijacking wasn't a major challenge for their organization, yet 90% were seeing user sessions disrupted by such activities. Some admitted that they entirely lacked visibility into audience hijacking's prevalence.

But audience hijacking clearly continues to have a major impact on retailers with 28% of respondents reporting that its biggest impact is revenue loss.

A further 23% say that it is compromising ROI on digital marketing investments.

Nearly one-quarter of respondents (23%) indicate that audience hijacking has diminished their customers' loyalty, and 17% say it's causing fewer shoppers to make repeat purchases from their e-commerce stores.

Methodology: The survey respondents included more than 75 digital marketing, IT security and technology leaders in retail or e-commerce organizations with at least 1,000 employees.

Hot Topics

The Latest

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

Today, organizations are generating and processing more data than ever before. From training AI models to running complex analytics, massive datasets have become the backbone of innovation. However, as businesses embrace the cloud for its scalability and flexibility, a new challenge arises: managing the soaring costs of storing and processing this data ...