IBario

History

Founded in 2010 by five founders — Emil Pozaylov, Yefi Gureni, Felix Leshno, Pavel Sandler and Mike Peters, iBario, is a privately owned and funded company. The company focuses on product diversification in its business model and has branched out in various different industries, from cooking to software and even gaming. Over the years, iBario has grown to be one of the world’s biggest internet marketing platform.

With 60 employees, iBario operates from a modest industrial building in Or Yehuda and is estimated by industry experts to be worth around $100 million. According to estimates, in 2014, iBario has an annual turnover of $90 million and a net revenue of more than $10 million.

iBario, one of the biggest Google Adwords buyer in Israel and Europe, is also a well-known partner of Google. Israel Growth Partners are also interested to acquire 25% stake of iBario valued up to $150 million in May 2014.

Business model

The net worth of the company is estimated to be $100 million. As a privately owned and funded company, iBario receives majority of its funding from advertisements. The company runs their own advertising network, RevenueHits, which serves advertisements to the users on the iBario sites. Aside from RevenueHits, iBario is also one of the largest Google Adwords buyer in Europe and Israel, helping them to penetrate both local and international advertising network. Due to the company’s heavy usage of Google Adwords, they have established close ties with Google, with both companies working closely towards developing website content for the best user experience.

Revenue generation

iBario aims to generate revenue from distribution of its own software and developing PC maintenance products. In just a short period, they have acquired brands like PerformerSoft, BeGamer and Slovak Studio to help develop and code their content sites.

iBario's biggest revenue generator is the free software installation engine InstallBrain. Studies estimate that iBario produces 50% of its revenue, but it has decline to no more than 20% due to the limited ability of toolbars to override the search engine settings of users.

RevenueHits, iBario's sister company, is estimated to account 30-40% of their overall revenue. It works with other advertising networks in Israeli namely Matomy Media Group and Marimedia. Revenue is earned only if user has performed a transaction from the advertisement. It also allows users to run controlled test on the various marketing communication channels.

Popularity

iBario has successfully launched their brands with many gaining much attention from around the world. Their websites, according to Leshno who is one of the five founders, have shown remarkable results and are at the top of their individual categories. Softtango, iBario’s download site which brings in approximately 25 million downloads per month, is the fourth largest download site in the world. Other notable websites include:

Brands

It carries number of brands:

Security issues

The potential risk adware organizations face can be lots especially when users are allowed to install stuff on systems without consent.

Adware is often perceived as low-risk as they display unwanted popups and pop under advertisements. The pose security risks when used, by loading malware into their system upon adware installation.

In 2013, iBario’s InstallBrain adware installed Mevade Botnet Trojan in a number of their systems. It grew from a million to five million users. Regardless of how attractive and beneficial it becomes for adware companies, it will still result in abuse access to user computers, to a point intentionally downloading malware.

Israeli/Ukrainian adware company then pushed a new click-fraud malware known as 'MEVADE/SEFNIT' into the network of computers which was affected by the adware. The downloaded malware then takes over computers to commit click fraud or to mine bitcoins.

There are few evidences that reflect similar threat between Ukraine and iBario, namely similarities in:

1. Coding
2. How they connect to their respective command and control servers
3. Same Ukrainian contractors have been working for the project called ‘Antivirus Check system’ for iBario

InstallBrain was then removed from iBario’s corporate website due to the installation of malware. iBario then replaced InstallBrain with UnknownFile as of 25 June 2014.

Future developments

iBario have been working on a project called ‘Antivirus Check System’ (ACS) that helps check for anti-malware detection rates before new malware are used. This system was developed to evade anti-malware detection for iBario adware.