Ru-Centre, the Russian Registrar, has released this Monday on the number of domains in circulation. According to their figures 140 000 new URLs appeared last year in the Russian internet, which is 46.31% more than in 2004. In the beginning of 2006 RuNet has gained 40 000 new URLs again, so in total there are approximately 500 000 .ru/.su domains registered to date.
This is a further indication of the rapid growth in the Russian internet space, the RBC Daily reports;
Such development is predictable: RuNet is developing dynamically, which is proved by the growth of electronic commerce and investments in advertising. In the near future the speed of this growth is not going to slow down.
The Ru-Centre report also speaks about changes in their customer base. During 2005 the share of domain’s registered by Russian companies has decreased to 44% from 60% three years ago. The number of foreign domain owners has grown, though it’s still too small – 4%. The share of Moscow based domain owners is decreasing (from 53.72 to 50.41%) as the share for other Russian regions is growing.
The number of domains in Russia is expected to exceed half a million this autumn. At the moment the Russian internet market is showing huge amounts of growth, giving first place only to China.
One of the main catalysts for this growth is the expanding online marketing sector in the Russian internet and the resources it provides advertisers. According to AKAR, in 2005 advertising value in RuNet was $60m, for comparison in 2004 it was $35m, so we have 71% growth here. This year further growth is expected. Begun, a leading Russian PPC provider, has found similar results.
“According to our research, the number of organizations and individuals, using contextual advertising services in 2005 was about 30 000, which is twice more than in 2004, – commented Dmitry Chistov, the company representative. – As for the income of leaders in the internet business, they have increased 5-6 times during last year. Main factors of growth are increasing advertising budgets, growth of number of partners and dealers and auction prices growth in the market.”
According to Begun the market for contextual advertising will grow far more rapidly than the other channels of media internet advertising.
“During the last four years contextual advertising has accounted for nearly half of all media advertising, says Dmitry Chistov. – Next year this this will increase, according to our estimates the value of contextual advertising can reach $70-80m. The main factors influencing internet business development here are the growth of web audience, growth of internet advertising methods in regions and a transfer of advertising budgets to the internet from other media channels”.
According to AKAR, the total of internet advertising budgets are around $85m this year, and next year they will almost double to $140m.
Source: Internet.ru
Nick Wilsdon
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Why .ru domains it is because search engines like rambler will not allow you to add your sites unless the site has a russian based unit. So we had to buy specially a .ru to be able to reach our russian clients.
All our various business with .com can not be added even the ones we run in Yoshkar Ola !!
In 1997 when I immigrated in Canada, there were already tons of .ru domains. Reason? It was all you could get at that time. If you wanted a domain,you’d buy that one. It was also the cheapest(around $3,I think,compared to much more for com,etc.