Yandex announced almost simultaneously — yesterday and today — two acquisitions. The NASDAQ-listed Russian digital giant is absorbing BandLink, a service for musicians, podcasters and labels to create micro sites, the news agency TASS reports.
BandLink helps them promote their releases and concerts (including with personalised links for social media), analyze audiences and identify their preferences.
Created in 2018, the startup claims to serve 120,000 artists and podcasters. In 2020, the company generated 1.8 million rubles in revenues and 233,000 rubles in net profit (around $25,000 and $3,200, respectively, at the average exchange rate of that year).
As a consequence of the deal, the service will be integrated to Yandex.Music, with the BandLink continuing developing business instruments for artists.
Yandex also announced an agreement to purchase eLama. Launched in 2009, this contextual advertising automation service was backed, five years later, by Impulse VC.
“The Russian market is unique if considering the number of available advertising systems and promotion tools. Small and medium-sized businesses often face the challenge of choosing the tools that best fit their particular case. We believe that business should have access to all available promotion tools and be able to choose the most efficient one. Our platform is here to help in this difficult choice,” Maxim Gorbachev, CEO of eLama, was quoted as saying.
“Together with Yandex, we will be able to scale our philosophy, approaches and tools to the entire market,” he added.
The parties expect the antimonopoly authorities to approve the deal in Q2 2022.
