Wining and dining Nigerian diplomats? $10,000.
Paying off Nigerian government for the Black Gold? $2,500,000,000 (that’s $2.5 billion)
Calling the joint venture NIGAZ? Priceless.
Seriously, you can’t make this shit up. Hat tip to my brother Hooman for letting me know (hey, if my name is Ashkan, did you think my brother would be named Jack?).
I want to run this man’s fan club, seriously.
Russian online media company raises an additional $5M in funding:
Moscow Venture Fund, a $30 million venture capital fund that is managed by Allianz Rosno Asset Management, has invested more than $5 million for an additional 24 percent stake in Tvigle (Tvigo Entertainment), a producer and distributor of content for Internet TV and mobile entertainment, reported business newspaper Kommersant. The consulting company ADJ Consulting acted as financial adviser to Tvigo.
Read more. With estimates for user generated content driven social networks being scaled back fast and furious, it’s a matter of time before you see more and money going into premium video… it’s called a flight to quality. Interesting to see this happening in Russia though, where the country has faced tremendous economic pressures to falling oil and gas prices. But, then again, it makes even more sense to see some diversification away from traditional sectors into new media, what with Russia being the fastest growing Web market in Europe.
Call me crazy, but if I were Russia, I would not want an overly ambitious American company dominating the Web market either (or aspiring to, anyway). Especially when you consider that Russia is the Web’s fastest growing Web market.
How would the US government feel if a foreign company sought to control and dominate in wireless, TV, radio, print, billboards or… the Web? It would not. The US government invented the Internet, so it seems logical that it has a hands-off approach on the Web… but I really do not see why we’re calling Putin et al. out for this. This is perfectly expected.
Quintura’s Yakov Sadchikov is a fine example of an entrepreneur and executive who maximizes blogging to the fullest to bring visibility to his company.
As a Russian writer and entrepreneur, he has a front row seat on one of the most dynamic and exciting markets in the world (not talking merely web markets or economic market, we’re talking market for products, but also people and ideas…)
Russia is even more so than China and India leading the world in leading the world in the 21st century, if that makes sense.
But Yakov is fortunate to have a unique edge which is his being in Russia. Corporate blogging is a great platform for entrepreneurs to raise visibility for their company and break down barriers in business development.
However, I personally find myself increasingly cornered because we have so many partnerships (fortunately) that any commenting on any company can come across as me airing in public what ought to be left private. For the record, sometimes we have NDAs, but even when we don’t, I generally don’t cross the line between my general observations of our industry and our company’s interactions with peers.
But that is idealistic, and frankly, naive. Anytime I tag a post with a company we work with, invariably it’s a double-edged sword.
That’s just one pitfall. Another, frankly, is the time it takes to be a world-class blogger in coming up with intuitive insights and critical analysis… ooh… big words, but you get the idea.
I think Jason Calacanis is one example of an entrepreneur who stopped blogging - maybe temporarily - because his VC overlords started to wonder what he spent more time on: his company’s operational dashboard or his blog’s publishing dashboard.
I don’t have VC overlords to worry about… but I am not foolish, as much as blogging opens up doors and adds visibility, it also closes down others.
I certainly don’t want to make it sound like I am discouraging Yakov, Jason et al. to stop or even reduce blogging, au contraire, both provide great insights from their respective vantage points, but I think both gents would agree than sometimes, it’s good to step away from the machine and focus on the bizness.
Then again, maybe that’s just my mood these days: there aren’t enough hours in a day for me to focus on our business deals and pipeline… over time that changes, if you enjoy writing, and people know I’ve never met a keyboard (or pen or microphone) I don’t like… then you always find your roots and get back to pontificating.
Russia’s answer to Michael Arrington, search engine Quintura’s CEO Yakov Sadchikov comes across some interesting figures on the Russian online advertising market, estimated at $260 million from January to June 2008. This is up 73% year-over-year, according to a report from MindShare Interaction. More interestingly is the fact that contextual advertising accounted for $161 million (or 62% of total online advertising spending), while display advertising accounted for $99 million (38%) of total online spending.
The business daily Kommersant breaks down the top 10 online display advertisers in Russia, including:
- Ford Motor Co. ($4.6m),
- MTS ($2.5m),
- Megafon ($2.3m),
- General Motors ($2m),
- VimpelCom ($1.9m),
- Peugeout Citroen ($1.6m),
- Nissan ($1.5m),
- Samsung ($1.3m),
- Honda ($1.2m), and
- Procter & Gamble ($1.1m).
Partially because I was born in a Russian-built hospital in Tehran, I’ve always been somewhat interested in Russia, its history, and its recent resurgence. The country is a fascinating story in the re-making, what with the rumors surrounding outgoing President Vladimir Putin’s massive fortunes, and the stratospheric rise the country’s fortunes have experienced of late. Consider some stats I came across:
The average monthly Russian salary was:
- $200 in 2003,
- $303 in 2005,
- $545 in 2007.
according to Kommersant and Pravda. Obviously, there’s plenty of upside.
And that’s for the average employee, as in all countries, the highest earners earn far, far more. A CEO earns $150,000 per annum, or just over $10,000 per month, according to this report, and that was 2007, I suspect it’s gone even higher.
In fact, the top CEOs get up to $24,000 per month, according to this.
Connecting the dots: as Russia’s massive population - which a few short years ago was showing troubling demographic signs - increases its purchasing power, expect online advertising rates to follow suit. Here’s comScore’s Top 10 Russian sites:
Russia is flush with riches of a rising oil price. It’s no wonder that the nation is experiencing a boom in venture capital fundraising. But there is much merit to the money, Russia is Europe’s fastest growing Web market. This data is from November, 2007.
It’s impressive: Russia grew 23%, according to comScore. Germany remains the largest market, but you have to figure that over time Russia just might become the largest country, by far, in terms of web audiences.
Also worth noting is that the European market is pretty much the same size as China’s, and a tad smaller than the American one. Of course, in both China and America, it’s one market and one language (mind you, Chinese speak Mandarin and Cantonese, with the former being the official language in mainland China).
Either way, Europe is far, far more fragmented…
“We predict internet advertising to pass three milestones over the next three years,” ZenithOptimedia’s forecast said. “We expect it to overtake radio advertising in 2008; to attain a double-digit share of global advertising in 2009; and to overtake magazine advertising in 2010, with 11.5% of total ad spend.”
In 2008, Worldwide internet ad spending will climb to $44.6 billion from about $36 billion, as such, the Internet will overtake radio to become the fourth largest medium with 9.4% of global advertising share; and in 2010, it will overtake magazines to become the third largest medium with an 11.5% share.
Even TV, still the biggest and most powerful way to reach a lot of customers at once, is projected to essentially hold its ground on the global stage, taking a 37.9% slice in 2008 after getting 37.7% in 2007. Outdoor, for its part, will expand its stake to 5.7% from 5.6%, and cinema will improve to 0.5% from 0.4%.
“By 2010, China will be the fourth largest advertising market in the world and Russia will be 6th,” Jones says.
PLAY
