The Association of Bloggers named the most promising sites for posting video content

The Association of Bloggers and Agencies (ABA) has conducted an analytical analysis of the social media market in Russia for 2024 in order to determine on the basis of what factors market participants choose platforms for interaction. Izvestia got acquainted with the results of the study on Wednesday, December 25.

The authors analyzed the following platforms for posting video content in horizontal and vertical formats: VKontakte (separately "VK Video" and "VK Clips"), Rutube, Zen, Yappy (only in the vertical video category), Looky (only in the vertical video category), Nuum (only in the vertical video category) and YouTube (both in the horizontal and vertical video categories). They evaluated such classic points as the size of the site's audience, its characteristics, monetization and cost of advertising placements, as well as important criteria for bloggers (access to the audience, attractiveness for advertisers, prospects for the site's development).

As a result, ABA concluded that the market of short vertical videos is the most dynamically developing segment, and its undisputed leader is VK Clips. This is due to the fact that the platform simultaneously provides authors with access to the largest audience in the Russian Federation, financial opportunities in the form of monetization and grants, security in the long term, and growth prospects. As for horizontal videos, in the opinion of the authors of the study, the segment is actually full (Zen, Rutube, VK Video) and one should not expect explosive audience growth.

It also turned out that when choosing a platform for publishing and promoting their content, bloggers focus on the safety of their investments and the possibility of long-term planning, which allows them not to worry that the service may go bankrupt or be insufficiently covered. From this point of view, the most promising sites today are those belonging to large holdings, such as VK Video and VK Clips (VK), Rutube/Yappy (Gazprom-Media), and Nuum (MTS).

Another factor is monetization. On the whole, the Association of Bloggers assesses it as problematic: none of the platforms allows authors to earn income comparable to the costs of producing quality content solely through monetization. However, VK Video and VK Clips stand out in the market due to the payment of grants to aspiring bloggers.

At the same time, YouTube, as noted in ABA, still remains attractive due to the high relative cost of advertising integrations compared to other platforms and wide access to the audience. But high risks of blocking, and therefore loss of audience, lack of monetization and advertisers' concerns about working with an unfriendly platform pessimize YouTube's rating.

According to the results of the study in ABA predict that in the perspective of two to three years the cost of advertising integrations on Russian platforms will equalize with foreign ones, and in the horizon of five years the share of foreign platforms in the market will decrease to the level of 50% of the market, provided that Russian players continue to work actively with bloggers. It is also expected that in the long term a generation of authors and content consumers will emerge in Russia, for whom the use of exclusively domestic platforms will become the basic norm, in contrast to the situation in the 2010s.

On December 13, the Association of Bloggers and Agencies told Izvestia that the audience of Russian video services increased by more than 30 million over the year. Thus, VK Video's audience grew by 4.3 million to 72.2 million, VK Clips - by 9.8 million to 66.6 million, and Rutube's audience jumped by 17.9 million to 58.3 million. The audience of Nuum, which began operations at the end of December 2023, amounted to 5.2 million. At the same time, YouTube's performance is gradually declining: the average daily reach of this video hosting in October decreased by 2.3% and amounted to 46.2 million people, while in January it was 54.2 million.