• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 22, 2020

Global cybersecurity firm CHEQ will announce the acquisition of ClickCease, a click-fraud prevention company based out of Tel-Aviv.

The move is set to expand CHEQ’s presence in the pay-per-click and search engine marketing space, expanding to support small and mid-size advertisers.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

All 20 ClickCease employees will stay on. There are plans to “significantly” expand the team to support even aggressive growth.

With offices in Ne -York, Tokyo, Shanghai and Tel Aviv, CHEQ offers cybersecurity and ad-verification services to major advertisers and media agencies worldwide. The addition of ClickCease opens the door to tens of millions of SMB advertisers who spend primarily on search media.

Search & Performance Marketing Daily caught up with CHEQ CEO Guy Tytunovich to talk about how the acquisition will change the company. Excerpts from the discussion follow.

SPMD:  Does the acquisition dissolve the ClickCease brand with all services being added under the CHEQ name?

Guy Tytunovich:  The product will become CHEQ's flagship product for SMBs and will remain under the ClickCease brand. We will bolster it with CHEQ's cybersecurity tests and it will now benefit from even more product managers, programmers, and cybersecurity experts than ever before, working on adding more features to it.

SPMD:  What role will Yuval Haimov, founder and CEO of ClickCease, play in the new company?

Tytunovich:  Yuval will lead and run the entire SMB division at CHEQ, which will now also include the ClickCease platform and brand.

SPMD:  Does the acquisition include any ClickCease patents? 

Tytunovich:  The acquisition includes everything.

SPMD:  When did negotiations for the acquisition begin and who approached who?

Tytunovich:  We began negotiations in February 2020. At the time, we had launched CHEQ for PPC, which had quickly become the leading solution for click fraud among enterprise and mid-market advertisers.

As part of our vision to be the go-to solution for click fraud for every marketer in the world, we wanted to acquire the biggest player and the best platform in the SMB field.

When we did the market research, there was one company that was just leaps and bounds ahead of the competition and that was ClickCease, both in terms of market share and in terms of technology, product, and customer service. They had a great platform and solution, by far the largest client base, great numbers, and the best reputation in the industry. So the deal was a no-brainer.

SPMD:  How has the pandemic changed your business and how do you see it playing out for the remainder of the year?

Tytunovich:  On the enterprise front, except for select industries like travel, it's been business as usual. In many cases we've even seen a significant uptick in usage, because of growing ad-fraud trends during the pandemic.

On the SMB front, small businesses have come back strong, and over the past few months the industry has been showing remarkable activity. Also consider that many brick-and-mortar small businesses have transitioned to online distribution and sales, driving an increase in marketing activity and demand for click-fraud solutions.