Yandex, the leading Russian search engine, have announced their preliminary financial results for 2006. Revenue is reported to total $72m (USD), more than double that reported for 2005.
“Our internal research indicates that 2006 was the first year that search/context advertising accounted for more than half of Russia’s total online advertising,” – said Arkady Volozh, General Director and co-founder of Yandex. “We are pleased with the trends we are seeing, with experts estimating that current growth rates of online advertising may result in online advertising overtaking radio advertising in Russia in just a couple of years.”
Yandex reports their users number approximately 5m per day in December. The independent statistics group, LiveInternet lists them as covering 65% of the Russian market currently. Search/context advertisements represented more than 80% of revenues and media (banner) advertising represented the remainder of advertising revenues.
For the full-year 2006, the total number of Yandex.Direct (system of search/context ad placement) active advertisers increased by approximately 50% over full-year 2005 levels. For 2006, more than 30,000 advertisers placed search/context advertisements on Yandex search results pages and more than 11 billion advertisements were displayed.
The Public Opinion Foundation estimated that Internet penetration in Russia increased to 26 million people by year end, placing it ahead of Italy and France among European countries.
Source: Yandex
Nick Wilsdon
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Very impressive numbers of search/contextual advertising in Russia market. It’s good for Yandex they did real local focus for their search business.