Russian Online Video Market Booming, Becomes Biggest In Europe

Russia’s internet market is the largest in Europe, covering 66.5 million people, and it’s proving to be a force in the world of online video, too. New independent research from consulting firm iKS-Consulting puts ivi.ru — a video-on-demand (VoD) provider in Russia that focuses on premium, licensed content — as leader of the Russian market.

The report does come up with a number of points worth noting about the VOD market in Russia, which is currently the biggest in Europe.

(Note that ivi.ru has $40 million total in funding from Baring Vostok Capital Partners, ru-Net Holdings, Tiger Global Management, Prof-Media and Frontier Ventures).

To wit:

– Russia is the largest online video market in Europe with 60 million unique viewers

– Online advertising market grew by 27% y-o-y to approximately $2.2B

– Online video advertising market grew by 67% y-o-y to approximately $88.7M

– The Russian VoD market more than doubled y-o-y to $50.5M (a 105% y-o-y growth in revenues)

– Top nine players control 97% of the Russian VoD market

– The ad-supported model accounts for 78% ($39.5M) of the market (74% growth y-o-y); while the payment model has grown more than four-fold and accounts for 22% ($11M)

– 100-200M video viewings are generated via each key player’s service monthly

– A third (24M users) of Russian population use the Internet to watch VoD services monthly

– In 2014, Russian VoD market is expected to grow by 75% to $88.7 mln and to reach $290.5 mln by 2018

iKS-Consulting also said ivi.ru, with a market share of 28% (by revenue) would make it the largest VoD service in Russia. For itself, ivi.ru claims to have doubled its revenues to $14.1 million (95% growth), doubled users to 30 million per month (114% increase y-o-y) and doubled video viewings to 200 million per month (135% increase y-o-y). It’s also claiming to be the number one player by the total number of downloads of its mobile app on devices (smartphones and tablets) with 9 million downloads and the number one player by audience who watch video on Smart TVs, with 2 million users monthly.

Russia is the largest online video market in Europe by audience with more than 66.5 million Russians.

According to iKS-Consulting, in 2014, the Russian VoD market will continue to actively grow by over 75% to $88.7 million and by 2018 will reach almost $290.5 million.

All this is being driven by paid-for video services (including new movie releases) and the decrease in online video piracy.

However, market consolidation and M&A are expected to be driven by both global and Russian Internet companies such as Google, Apple, Yandex, Mail.ru, including social networks like VKontakte and Odnoklassniki.