Yerevan Web Meetings: How to make money on online video?

Yerevan/Mediamax/. The second master class within Yerevan Web Meetings initiated by Mediamax and aimed at introducing the best foreign experience of building and promoting a web-content in Armenia was conducted in Yerevan on October 22.

Yerevan Web Meetings project is implemented by Mediamax owing to the general sponsorship of VivaCell-MTS, leading Armenian mobile operator.

The second master class was conducted by the Founder and Co-Shareholder of ivi.ru portal Anna Znamenskaya who spoke on the trends and prospects of online video and monetization of internet projects. In 2007-2009, Anna Znamenskaya was the Commercial Director of Rambler Media, then – the head of Digital Access Company.

Anna Znamenskaya said that about 42.3mln users or 85% of the Russian internet audience view online video on a regular basis and Russia is the sixth in the world by this index, still yielding to the West, Japan and China by the number of views. Russian viewers spend 20-25 minutes a day on average while watching online video on the internet. 62% of online video viewers in Russia are people aged 15-35 in almost equal gender proportion.

Anna Znamenskaya spoke about the types of monetization of video projects, about fine points of video ads on the internet and cooperation with the advertisers.

According to her, the main trend in the internet video will be as follows: the user generated content (UGC) will “go” to social networks and video resources will shift to a quality and licensed content and will acquire qualities of an internet TV. “The internet will move towards the TV by its content and technologies”, said Anna Znamenskaya noting that modern TVs with internet access are now getting more and more widely spread in Russia and in the world: 80 thousand multimedia TV sets with internet access were sold in Russia in 2010 whereas this year the sales already made 0.5mln.

She also noted that thematic and authorized video services are likely to emerge on the net which will offer advertisers a target audience and the users will pay more for a quality video content.

The expert pointed out that the owners of video resources should also think over the availability of quality videos on mobile devices. Anna Znamenskaya cited Japan as an example where mobile internet traffic already exceeds the wired one.

Anna Znamenskaya informed that a video ad brings in only 2% of the income of the internet advertising in Russia but it’s an “obvious breakthrough” if taken into account 0% share of this type of ad 2 years back. Overall income from video advertising on the internet in Russia made USD 20mln in 2010, and the market is dynamically growing.


“The drawback of the video ad on the internet is that unlike banners, users take a video ad as an image but not one which calls to action or purchases”, said Anna Znamenskaya adding that this is the reason why at times authors take up specific marketing steps, for instance, “placement” of advertised objects in the video or interactive video ad, as this one .

The expert also noted that owners of video resources should offer rating systems like those offered by TV channels to attract more advertisers.

The upcoming master class within the project will be conducted by a start-up manager, Editor-in-Chief of Bfm.ru and founder of Lenta.ru Anton Nosik in Yerevan on October 29.