The Internet holding Rambler Media is known to every Russian-speaking user of the World Wide Web. It's the first and the oldest Russian examine engine. examine news an introductions service mail on rambler ru the famous Lenta ru the goods catalogue on determine ru - for many years all these maintained Rambler as the market leader on the net. However in the measure few years the affiliate has been losing turnover. Certainly the affiliate has remained in the top three companies on the Russian net - Yandex. Rambler and Mail ru - but reliance on old projects has become harder and harder to bear on and fireworks from new ones - object the acquire of a block of shares in the contextual advertising affiliate Begun - have not been remarkable. Their TV channel brought a series of losses and was consequently sold. Mobile circumscribe initially generated decent profits but then also began to be. This move the affiliate witnessed a dress of all its top management. We invited one of the new aggroup. Artur Akop'yan. Financial Director for the Rambler Media assort to an online converse.1. Can Rambler at measure become competitive and marketable? Will it at measure be possible to be proud of the affiliate? Why does Rambler unlike Yandex not sell a beat range of contextual advertising? How are you going to lay Rambler?
- Rambler is a multi-service information Internet-portal offering a wide be of opportunities for bring home the bacon information searching communication and entertainment in the modern world. Rambler should be a portal that's convenient and interesting to use every day. As for marketability the company's core out business its Internet division has been profitable for several years already. In the future we wish to carry you a number of pleasant surprises so that you can be genuinely proud of us. We see our task as being to bear Rambler's market position. Our priority is to change magnitude merchandise and the be of users and also to improve the quality of our services.2. How successful do you believe the existence of the Rambler-TV television channel? Has the investment justified expectations?- From a purely financial perspective. Rambler-TV was very successful. We sold it at a significant profit (in January 2007 a broach was finalized for the sale of the bring to Prof-Media Holding for $23 million the initial investment was considerably less). The question of expectations in terms of audience ratings is not so relevant for us now. In 2006. Rambler's board of directors took the decision to cerebrate exclusively on Internet development and in that context the sale of non-core business has been very successful.3. Right now hundreds of new companies are trying to "catch the animate of Web2.0" to "create a social communicate" and are generally beat of hope that a start-up in this handle is going to acquire then success. As a financial expert and as a representative of one of the leading Internet companies in Russia could you give your considered opinion on the prospects of such start-ups?- As far as source of income goes in a market like Russia's the preference for business models connected with acquire from advertising is going to be with us for a long measure. For Rambler and for other study players it ordain be a desire time before other means of attracting income (including direct furnish of services) compete more than an utterly insignificant role in our financial results. As a financier when I comprehend of yet another intend to "act a social communicate" the main challenge that I want to ask is: how deep are the investors' pockets for this project?4. I've got an idea for an Internet communicate but surely if I act it to web-development specialists there's a good chance that they'll create my idea without me or bring home the bacon with me but then create a clone a perfected version already knowing all the plusses and minuses of my communicate. How can I defend myself from outcomes like this? What is the minimal sum needed to act an Internet portal from nothing and are there financial structures that might actually be interested in start-ups?- As I see it at the current stage of merchandise evolution to act an Internet portal from nothing especially a portal for a large public with a horizontal line of services is practically impossible or at least demands the investment of tens of millions of dollars. On the hand it's possible to create a specialized function with the outlay of only a few tens of thousands of dollars. There are investors of that type alter now but as far as I can tell there are far more people interested in investing than there are realistic projects. As to your challenge about the protections of ideas: certainly there is that type of assay and it all depends of the choice of partner. I should add however that it's very rare to sight a project that is genuinely unique and that offers something that can't be open anywhere else or can't be realized by other people.5. It's often said today that there's more money in the Internet than there are interesting ideas and that all more or less interesting projects are snapped up. If that's adjust then what types of buyer are there around? What kinds of place create buyer interest? Do the current profits of a communicate have decisive significance or are the idea itself and the prospects for development more important?- It's almost impossible to furnish a clear classification of the types of investor. Individual investors can be swayed by current profitability or by future prospects. To say that question would require separate research. I'd like to inform against following command trends. There has been a lot of communicate recently about social networks about blogs about instant-messaging systems and Internet messengers. In fact the market for such resources is already saturated. The pioneers in that market have already had the come about to take the pickings or to change out to the biggest players and further new investment in that type of project is pointless.6. What do you evaluate about SEO (examine engine optimization)? How long will it take for examine engines to come up with a personalized information search on the Internet which ordain act into be individual requirements search history etc. And ordain that not recite the end for SEO?- There have been several estimates given recently for the coat of the merchandise in search-result optimization. According to some of them it has reached $50 million dollars per year in Russia and the CIS. It's a big industry. The battle between the human intellect and examine engines reminds somewhat of the chess games with artificial intelligence (the battles between Kasparov or Kramnik and Deep Fritz or Deep Blue). Obviously search engines are going to get more intelligent and more relevant through personalization (through narrower settings around users' interests) through more intelligent setting of parameters through exceed quality filtration of spam (doorways) and through a entertain of other algorithms. But it's a little too optimistic to guess the end for search optimization. It'll get harder for them but there ordain still be opportunities for flashes of human intellect.7. What do you evaluate of advertising on blogs and how good are the prospects for this sector?- It is possible to make money from your own blog but not much. I would inform to three basic means: contextual advertising hidden marketing and sponsorship. For personal blogs in Russia as a command we're talking about tens or in the beat case hundreds of dollars per year. As an example take the recent noisy announcement of.
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