In the past years, Israel's advertising industry has lost as much as 260 million shekels ($75 million) due to engagement from bots, fake users, and automation tool, a new study from cybersecurity company CHEQ reveals.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
The CHEQ data indicate that 7.3% of internet traffic engaging with digital ads in Israel was driven by fake, automated and malicious actors, including botnets, scrapers, fake users, click farms, and automation tools.
In 2021, Israel saw 4.5 billion shekels ($1.3 billion) on advertising, 1.9 billion shekels ($552 million) of which when to digital advertising. The 7.3% hit to that traffic caused by bots and other fake presences amounted to 138 million shekels ($40 million).
CHEQ assesses the overall damage, when remarketing to bots, etc. and the loss of revenue that could have been made if humans had viewed the ads, could be as high as 260 million shekels ($75 million).
The data was released as part of a broader global study conducted by CHEQ across a pool of over 50,000 websites worldwide to test the validity and authenticity of their users.
While this is the first broad study of its kind in Israel, these issues have been analyzed extensively overseas. A recent report by the US body ANA (Association of National Advertisers) found that advertisers will lose as much as $120 billion globally to ad fraud, namely driven by botnets, fake users, click farms and other forms of fake traffic.
Guy Tytunovich, founder and CEO of CHEQ, said, "Globally speaking, we're living in the era of the Fake Web, and Israel is no exception."
"In North America and Europe we see the rapid adoption of security measures to protect marketing efforts from bots and fake users, and we're starting to see this happen with the big brands and agencies in Israel too, which is encouraging. But the industry is still in early stages of fighting back, and there's a lot more to be done," Tytunovich added.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
