Page 126 - RusRPTSept23

9.1.7 TMT sector news
Telegram’s daily average coverage in Russia increased to 54.3mn people in July from 51.9mn a month earlier, and the messenger went ahead of social network VKontakte, whose daily audience rose to 52.6mn from 52.1mn people, researcher Mediascope said late on August 9. YouTube’s daily average audience increased to 52.1mn users in July from 50.8mn people a month earlier. By monthly average audience, YouTube led with 95.5mn people in July. VKontakte had 87.6mn and Telegram 81.2mn people.
The top 10 Russian bloggers increased revenue from advertising integrations on YouTube by an average of 19% in the first half of the year, Kommersant writes, citing a study by the Association of Bloggers and Agencies.
In absolute terms, the earnings of opinion leaders reached 483mn. At the same time, the number of videos decreased by 20%, to 430, and the number of integrations increased by 30%, to 305. Direct monetization for Russians on YouTube is disabled, so advertising is now not a block from the platform, but is placed directly into blogger videos.
In the top three of advertising revenue growth are Belarusian blogger and musician Vlad A4, journalist-foreign agent Aleksey Pivovarov (integration with Yandex Travel, Evie, Netology, Avto.ru) and TV presenter Ida Galich.
Among foreign agents, Alisher Morgenstern, Yuri Dud and Ekaterina Shulman are also in the top 10 in terms of income, but the earnings of the last two have decreased due to a decrease in the amount of released content.
Russian advertisers looked at the reaction of the authorities, assessed the risks and came to the conclusion that it is possible to work with YouTube (unlike Instagram, which is banned in Russia). Some clients left bloggers-foreign agents, but for the rest they became a way to get a solvent audience that left the country.
While the world's largest video hosting service is not banned in Russia, RuTube, owned by Gazprom-Media Holding, is not a competitor to it: the conversion is too low, market participants say. The Bell wrote about how RuTube tried to lure bloggers at a high price and was going to spend RUB30bn on hosting development. Nevertheless, its traffic does not exceed the first percent of its competitor.
RUSSIA Country Report September 2023 www.intellinews.com