2009 Russian Contextual Advertising Market Revenues Up 13% in Ruble Terms
Russian contextual advertising agency iConText estimates that the volume of the online contextual advertising market in Russia in 2009 was 9.61 billion rubles before VAT, a 13% growth in ruble terms over the previous year (8.5 billion rubles in 2008).
In dollar terms, the total market size was down about 7% to $320 million from $344 million in 2008.
According to its report, revenues of Yandex.Direct, were 7.5 billion rubles, or 78% of the total contextual advertising market.
Besides Yandex there are two other players on the Russian contextual advertising market - Google, with an estimated 10% market share and revenues of 1.01 billion rubles (a 50% increase over 2008) and “Begun” («Бегун») with 11% market share and revenues of 1.10 billion rubles.
This growth in contextual ads took place against the background of a disastrous year for the advertising market in general - revenues fell an average of 30% in ruble terms, according to the Russian Association of Communications Agencies.
According to iConText, the out-performance of contextual advertising was due to a combination of factors:
- The reallocation of advertising budgets in favor of context
- Prevalence of small and medium businesses in the contextual advertising market. These advertisers are more mobile and are not bound by pre-determined annual budgets
- The growth of Russia’s total Internet audience, and the number of search queries
In 2010 the agency expects growth of 20-25% in rubles compared with the last year and expects the market volume will reach approximately 12 billion rubles.
51% of iContext equity is owned by Ru-Net, the Internet investment holding company. According to expert estimates, the 2008 deal was valued at $7 million.
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That’s incredible! I have to think those numbers are pretty accurate. Contextual is pretty easy to track – plus, Yandex reporting earnings right in line with this.