Since its launch last year with several millions of US dollars in funding, Ordynets [Russian for ‘member of the Golden Horde’] is emerging as a leading ad network on the Russian social media scene. The network claims to have acquired more than 200 significant communities, which gather some 150 million subscribers. In addition, Ordynets works with more than 5,300 independent communities which total 350 million subscribers.
“Advertisers may reach nearly 3.5 million subscribers through our own communities and an additional 9 million via partnering communities,” Ordynets General Manager Artem Prokofiev told East-West Digital News. Russia has more than 85 million Internet users in total.
Among the network’s communities are “Omar Khayyam and other great philosophers” (3 million subscribers), “Born in the USSR” (2.77 million), and “Comedies” (1.7 million). While most of these groups are from Russian social networks — Moi Mir, Odnoklassniki and Vkontakte — Ordynets is also working with Facebook and Instagram groups.
Ordynets offers to community owners a minimum revenue of 30 rubles (about $0.5) per 1,000 views. The average revenue reaches 35 rubles, after Ordynets retains a 20% commission fee, according to Prokofiev.
“Our platform allows owners to transfer content and commercial management of their communities to us— which provides owners with maximized revenues while ensuring a wide reach for advertisers,” he adds.
This centralized management system is a distinctive advantage of Ordinec in the market, says Prokofiev. “VK’s official ad service, or a company like Sociate, have to agree on a campaign with each community owner involved. Since these owners may lack inventory in the required period, it may be a daunting task to organize a campaign with a large budget involving a big number of communities.”
“Everything is way simpler with us, since we manage community inventories directly.”
One year ago, Ordynets agreed on an investment plan of up to 300 million rubles (approximately $4.8 million) with Marat Zagidullov, a prominent businessman from Kazan and former member of the Russian parliament. “This is the total available amount, essentially to acquire communities, but we’re not sure we’ll actually use these funds entirely,” said Prokofiev.
In an interview with Russian business daily Kommersant, Zagidullov said that he expects return on investment in this segment to reach up to 50% per year.
