Internet marketing trends, online advertising, branding, search engine marketing
The Russian social network application on Vkontakte.ru when a user can send a virtual cocktail to a friend called “Cocktail to a Friend” (Cocktail2Friend) has become the most popular social network application in Russia. Vkontakte is Russia’s #1 social network with over 59 million registered users. It released API for social games and other applications last year. Read more »
The Russian contextual advertising market was up 13% year-on-year to 9.61 billion Rubles ($302 million) in 2009. Yandex holds 78% of the market, ahead of Begun with 11% share and Google with 10% share. Due to Ruble devaluation, the contextual advertising spending in USD were actually down from $344 million in 2008 to $302 million in 2009, according to iConText.
Google increased its revenues in Russia by 50% year-on-year to 1.01 billion Rubles ($32 million) and reached 10% share of the Russian contextual advertising market. Google’s market share is just 1% less than the share of Begun of 11%. Begun revenues dropped 29% to 1.1 billion Rubles ($34 million), reported iConText. The drop can be explained by a decline of Rambler’s share of searches in Russia from 11% to 4% over the past year. Begun provides Rambler with its search contextual advertisements.
Yandex is the leader of the Russian contextual advertising market with 7.5 billion Rubles ($236 million) or 78% market share in 2009. Yandex is the 7th largest search property globally with 1.9 billion searches in 2009.
Source:http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/quintura/comblog/~3/f5_x2WMSVCw/
The Russian social games market has grown to $30 million in 2009 from almost zero in 2008. The half of the market is currently taken by Vesely Fermer (Cheerful Farmer), the most popular game on Russia’s leading social network VKontakte. On one hand, such a game generates about $1 million per month. On the other hand, it costs $30K-$50K to create content for the social game (or even less). No wonder, some 3,000 game developers in Russia and neighboring countries started making social games. Both Russian venture capital investors and Western venture capital funds, who expect the Russian social games market to explode, have started fueling the growth with fresh funds. Last December, Nival Network said it’s closing $5 million round.
Drimmi, social games developer founded in 2009 by Nikita Sherman, former chairman of Odnoklassniki.ru, has raised an undisclosed funding from Mangrove Capital Partners and ABRT Fund. David Waroquier, partner at Mangrove Capital Partners, led the round on behalf of the Luxembourg-based venture capital firm. David Waroquier pointed to the Russian social gaming market’s “high levels of users engagement and strong monetization history” in Drimmi’s official deal announcement. The funds agreed to invest several million into Drimmi in exchange for over a twenty percent stake in the company. Mangrove Capital is also an investor in online trivia game maker Amuso.
Founded in September 2009, Drimmi has a team of twenty game developers and marketers in Moscow. Drimmi, which is headed by CEO Nikita Sherman and COO Viktor Zakharchenko, aims to become #1 Russian social games developer.
The investment will be used for games development and launch on Russian social networks Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki.ru and MoiMir@Mail.ru. The first game will be released in a few weeks with more than ten games to follow in 2010. Drimmi CEO Nikita Sherman also worked as CEO of Russia’s leading online dating platform Mamba, where he introduced micro-payments for premium services.
Mangrove Capital and ABRT previously teamed up in Russia to invest in visual-based search engine Quintura, in-game advertising company EnterMedia and online shopping club KupiVIP.ru (which just raised $20 million from Accel, Mangrove and the others.)
The Russian social network users shall expect a lot of new social games in 2010. For example, the game Vesely Fermer (??????? ??????) was developed by i-Jet, an Yekaterinburg-based company with studios in Nizhniy Tagil and Chelyabinsk.
Source:http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/quintura/comblog/~3/-tv6E0GB-cI/
The leading Russian search engine Yandex, which holds over a half of Russian searches, has released a list of top searches (Zeitgeist Russia) in 2009. The searches for GTA 4 and The Sims 3, which are the names of the computer games GTA 4 released by Rockstar Games and The Sims 3 released by Electronic Arts became the 5th and 7th most popular searches in Russia in 2009 with more than 6 million and 4 million searches at Yandex, respectively. Read more »
Allianz Rosno Asset Management venture capital fund New Technologies has invested $5 million in sea seismic survey technology company Seismo-Shelf, the asset management company reported. Read more »
The online shopping club KupiVIP.ru, which is operated in Moscow by Privat Trade Ltd and organizes designer brand online sales in fashion and fashion accessories with large discounts off boutique prices, has raised $20 million in the third round of funding, KupiVIP.ru CEO Oskar Hartmann reported. The round was led by Accel Partners. Previous investors Mangrove Capital Partners, Arlan, Direct Group, and Oliver Jung also participated. KupiVIP.ru, which previously raised $11 million, has attracted the largest amount of venture capital in ecommerce venture in Russia, the company said. Read more »
