Israeli cyber-security company CHEQ announced that it is acquiring ClickCease, an Israeli click-fraud prevention startup. The full scale of the exit has yet to be revealed, however, recent reports tell that the total is in the tens of millions of dollars.

Random bots and competitors are sucking your budget dry

Anyone who markets online knows this problem: you set a marketing budget, and suddenly that budget that was supposed to get you through the winter has dwindled and quickly. Many times due to what seems like a swarm of new users who clicked on your ad, but in fact, a lot of times are just bots, click farms and even fake users, which all drain that beautifully organized budget. In reality, the funds are wasted on websites that try to increase revenue on your dime or competitors that will do anything to toss a wrench in your well-oiled marketing campaign machine. It’s estimated that click fraud spoils 20% of your online marketing budget, wasting around $24 billion a year for advertisers.

Both of the involved companies have developed systems to prevent click fraud scams for digital marketers. Though, while ClickCease offers small scale advertisers fraud prevention, its new stakeholder CHEQ also provides a system that can analyze content pages and prevent campaigns from being placed or shown next to negative content. Imagine for a second that an ad for a brand new SUV is posted in the middle of an article about a gruesome car accident. This is where CHEQ’s technology steps into prevention mode. Among its customers, are some of the digital advertising leading players including Spark, Dentsu, Outbrain, and more.

CHEQ CEO Guy Tytunovich explains that now the company can offer advertisers of all sizes a comprehensive fraud solution: “By agreeing to terms will allow CHEQ to continue focus its technological solutions for large scale advertisers, while ClickCease furthers growth with small businesses.”

CEO and founder of ClickCease, Yuval Haimov said: “We are thrilled to join the CHEQ family. Their technological prowess and market-leading position will help accelerate our customer growth. We are proud that we have turned ClickCease into a leader in ad-fraud prevention for small-scale advertisers and see the connection with CHEQ as a natural step in our journey.”

ClickCease was founded in 2014 by CEO Yuval Haimov and Ilan Missulawin. According to reports, ClickCease will retain its brand, while its 20 employees transition to CHEQ’s offices.