Cheetah Mobile (NYSE: CMCM) has responded to the article published by BuzzFeed News accusing the company of ad fraud.
According to a company spokesperson, “Near 97% of the revenue from the Company’s utility apps in the overseas market are contributed by dozens of third-party advertising platforms through SDKs and the remaining 3% are from an SDK developed by Cheetah Mobile itself, which represents less than 1% of the Company’s total revenue in the third quarter of 2018. Most of these SDKs are widely implemented in numerous other popular mobile applications all over the world.
Cheetah Mobile has no control over these third-party advertising platforms. The Company has neither the intention or ability to direct such advertising platforms to engage in the alleged ‘click injections.’ In addition, given the overwhelming contribution of revenues from third-party adverting platforms, the Company has no intention to engage in any alleged ‘click injection’ activities.'”
Cheetah claims that there are numerous untrue and misleading statements in BuzzFeed’s articles and plans to take legal action against Kochava and any other parties deemed responsible for the ‘fake news.’
Cheetah’s stock is down more than 30% since the story was published Monday.