Astrum will play for money – Kommersant

Astrum is a structure of Multiplier Group JSC, which since the end of last year has been building a new gaming holding based on the former assets of My.Games, and is launching a monetization service for game broadcasts. Thus, Astrum intends to increase the audience of its 4Game game store, according to the industry. However, the new service will have to compete with similar My.Games platforms that continue to operate on the Russian market – Boosty and Donation Alerts.

Kommersant drew attention to the fact that Astrum Entertainment LLC (Astrum Entertainment, part of Multiplier Group JSC) registered the AdvertDA website in early May. Judging by the information published on the website, AdvertDA is a streaming monetization service. “Kommersant” tried to register in the service, but it was not available.

AdvertDA is a new platform for advertising monetization of streamers, which will be launched by Astrum Entertainment, it will work in Russia, Astrum CEO Sergey Efremov explained to Kommersant: “Previously, similar functionality was offered by the Donation Alerts platform, which belongs to My. monetization for the region. Advertising monetization (placement of brand ads during broadcasts) does not really work anymore on Donation Alerts, but there are no problems with receiving donations (rewards) from Russian viewers in the service, says streamer Maxim Dvoryanchikov (JeySunTV).

Until February 2022, Russian streamers mainly used foreign broadcast monetization services, such as Twitch. But in March 2022, the company stopped payments to the Russian Federation. Now there are several similar services on the market: QIWI Donate (owned by QIWI), YStream (YMoney), Donation Alerts and Boosty (according to the privacy policy published on the website, also owned by My.Games). My.Games declined to comment.

At the end of 2019, QIWI estimated the volume of the game streaming and donations market at RUB 21.6 billion. with a growth potential of 20% per year (data for 2022 were not provided to QIWI). YuMoney calculated that by the end of 2022, the turnover of donations on the YuStream platform grew by 23% year-on-year, and the average number of transfers per user increased by 20%. The company also did not disclose absolute data.

A Kommersant source in a major Russian game studio believes that the launch of such a platform indicates that Astrum Entertainment has begun building an ecosystem of services around the 4Game platform: “This can help attract an audience to it.” AdvertDA will not become a competitor for existing services, but rather provide streamers with a base of advertising offers, says Ultimate Education CEO Pavel Moseikin: more likely to be judged on its performance.”

According to the owner of the eponymous PR and influence marketing agency Marina Supolyarina, now streamers and bloggers who earn on donations have problems withdrawing funds from viewers from the CIS and other regions outside of Russia: “This is a significant part of their audience, so streamers have to use various mechanisms for withdrawing funds from service accounts. In this regard, Ms. Supolyarina adds, there is a demand for a service that will allow Russian bloggers and streamers to “arrange receiving payments.”

Nikita Korolev