Welcome back to The Brand Data Revolution…Or, if you’re joining us for the first time, this is Pervasive Mind’sweekly newsletter focused on best practices, tips and tricks for brands knee deep in the world of brand protection and Minimum Advertised Pricing programs. Hopefully, this provides you with tactical advice to make your daily MAP journey more comfortable.
Comfort is a tricky thing…we all want to be comfortable, but comfort is often accompanied by our willingness to drop our guard, which can leave us vulnerable and exposed. In today’s retail environment, being comfortable can be perilous for brands, especially when it comes at the risk of introducing uncertainty and errors into your MAP program.
We talk to brand teams every week who are working with MAP providers they’ve used for years. And more often than not, the sentiment is something like, “We’ve been with them a long time…it’s mostly fine.”
But “mostly fine” is not a strategy. It’s not a competitive advantage. And it’s definitely not a reason to ignore whether you’re still getting the best visibility, enforcement support, or strategic insight possible.
Just in the past two years, the online landscape has changed dramatically, and the fact of the matter is that your provider might not have kept up.
The Game Has Changed, But Has Your Provider?
Just a couple of years ago, the MAP space looked very different. Amazon and Walmart weren’t nearly as aggressive with anti-scraping defenses. Unauthorized sellers hadn’t fully saturated the market. And many legacy MAP providers were comfortably delivering sufficient coverage with acceptable tools.
Since then, retail has evolved. And so have the tactics that violators use. Solutions that many brands use, from legacy providers, simply no longer cut it today.
Today, brands are confronted with ubiquitous dynamic pricing, AI-powered pricing strategies, aggressive seller aliasing, and marketplace blocking that thwarts traditional crawling tools. MAP isn’t just about catching the same violators anymore – it’s about adapting to the new ways they hide, manipulate, and undermine your pricing strategy.
Meanwhile, many of the providers that once dominated the market have become sluggish. They’re burdened by outdated infrastructure, slow product teams, a lack of innovation, or a reluctance to challenge internal processes that have remained unchanged for years. In some cases, their tools still rely on the same scraping methods they used in 2017.
That means while your contract may still be active, your protection may be outdated.
Why Comfort Prevents Progress
If you’ve been with the same provider for 3 or more years, it’s worth asking yourself: “When was the last time I actually evaluated what else is out there?“
Too often, brands fall into the trap of “good enough.” If violations are being reported and reports are delivered, they assume the program is working. But here’s the truth: if you haven’t explored the broader MAP landscape, you probably don’t even know what you’re missing.
Today’s modern MAP providers offer:
- Advanced AI and machine learning to identify patterns across marketplaces
- Sophisticated seller normalization to uncover behavior across aliases and platforms
- Flexible reporting and seller scoring to help prioritize what matters most
- Faster response cycles and modular product updates that aren’t bogged down by red tape
And perhaps most importantly, they’re innovating. Constantly.
In contrast, many legacy platforms still rely on scheduled crawls, canned reports, support ticketing, manual URL updates, and long delays between detection and enforcement, simply because that’s the way it has always been done.
What You’re Missing May Be Costing You
If you’re just looking at MAP monitoring as a way to check a box, your MAP program is stuck in the past and you’re likely losing:
- Timeliness: Delays between detection and action due to clunky UI’s allow violations to spread
- Coverage: Legacy scraping often misses key listings on Amazon, Walmart, and niche marketplaces
- Insight: Without modern tools, it’s hard to tell which sellers are causing the most damage
- Enforcement impact: You may be issuing notices to low-value violators while high-risk sellers slip through unnoticed
And all of that affects your pricing integrity, retailer trust, and revenue performance.
Ask These Questions to See If It’s Time to Re-Evaluate
To help brand teams gut-check their current MAP provider relationship, we’ve compiled a simple set of self-evaluation questions. Ask yourself:
- How long have we been with our current MAP provider?
- Has the product evolved meaningfully during that time?
- Are we getting full coverage on Amazon and Walmart, or are we seeing gaps in data, excuses, and caveats?
- Have we discussed blocking and anti-extraction strategy with our provider? And have they brought it up proactively?
- Can we clearly track the impact of our enforcement efforts over time?
- Do we see a reduction in violations or just ongoing activity?
- Is our provider helping us prioritize the biggest threats?
- When’s the last time we benchmarked our provider against others in the space?
- Have we seen a live demo of another platform in the last 12 months?
These aren’t trick questions – they’re foundational. And the answers can reveal whether you’re being proactive or passive about one of the most important components of your online channel strategy.
Final Thoughts: Loyalty Doesn’t Equal Performance
No one’s saying you need to change your MAP provider tomorrow. But in a world where distribution tactics, retail algorithms, and unauthorized seller behavior are evolving weekly, sticking with the status quo just because it’s familiar could be holding your organization back.
At Pervasive Mind, we believe brands deserve more than simply checking a box – they deserve insight, speed, and a partner who’s not only dedicated to providing the industry’s best data but also solving tomorrow’s problems, today.
If you’d like a confidential benchmark assessment or just want to see how other teams are handling similar challenges, let’s talk. There’s a difference between being protected and being comfortable…we’ll help you spot it.
