Private Equity Russia

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.

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