Bloggers’ incomes fell vertically – Kommersant

Over the past year, Russian millionaire bloggers who published content on TikTok have lost up to 72% of their income on average. The transition to YouTube and alternative platforms from vertical video formats has not yet led to a recovery in their income. At the same time, microbloggers with an audience of up to 50,000 people have no problems switching to alternative TikTok sites, their incomes have grown by 25% year-on-year, experts say.

The Association of Bloggers and Agencies (ABA) told Kommersant that Russian millionaire bloggers who post short videos on TikTok lost an average of 72% of their fees in the first quarter. The organization evaluated the top ten bloggers with an audience of 2.7 million people (Nikolena, Dima Talalanov, Filaretovs, Polina, Yulia Smurfi, Alan Gedygushev, Lyudmila Svetlova, Fail, Married to Marina, Tosha) – year on year their monthly income decreased from 7, 9 million rubles up to 2.5 million rubles The ABA suggests that the reason was a decrease in the number of advertisers and a multiple decrease in the coverage of publications.

A similar assessment is given by the communication agency “PR-development”. According to the company, the income of video bloggers who were popular on TikTok has decreased by 70%. Denis Volkov, CEO of the Epicstars agency, also says that the fees of millionaire bloggers have fallen due to the departure of Western sites and large anchor advertisers.

The outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine resulted in the violation of free access from Russia to international digital platforms and social networks. Restrictions were also set by Western services themselves: in particular, YouTube turned off monetization in Russia, Meta social networks (recognized as an extremist organization in the Russian Federation, owns Facebook and Instagram) blocked advertisers’ accounts, and TikTok limited the download of new videos and access to foreign content. All this contributed to the migration of Russians who make money on social networks to other resources, including domestic ones (see Kommersant dated April 4, 2022).

VK told Kommersant that more than 25 million users watch Clips daily, and views in 2022 increased by 127%, to a record 836 million. “The number of published clips increased by 346%, and the number of content creators increased by 133% “, – said the representative of the company. Yappy (owned by Gazprom-Media Holding) did not provide data on audience growth.

But millionaire bloggers who have made videos on TikTok are having difficulty switching to alternative sites, the ABA explains. They, the association admits, have accounts on Instagram, YouTube and Telegram, where content similar in format is published: “However, on none of the sites the number of subscribers even comes close to TikTok.” In addition, the ABA says advertisers are in no hurry to offer cooperation to bloggers who record short videos on alternative sites: “Such content is poorly monetized: advertisers prefer full-fledged materials with a high CTR (the ratio of an advertisement to the number of impressions.— “b”) to their links”.

At the same time, microbloggers (up to 50,000 subscribers) do not experience transition problems from TikTok, the Perfluence agency says. According to the operating director of the agency Evgenia Kazakova, immediately after the restriction of TikTok in the Russian Federation, most of the microbloggers were in no hurry to leave the platform. “But the effective work of the Reels algorithms on Instagram and YouTube Shorts gradually won the trust of users, and some TikTok bloggers went there,” she notes.

A significant part of professional bloggers have adapted to the situation, and first of all, these are micro and nano bloggers, agrees Denis Volkov: “If the income of millionaires has fallen, then for small bloggers, on the contrary, it has grown – by 23-25% in the first quarter of this year.” Mr. Volkov believes that this happened due to the emergence of new medium-sized Russian advertisers who began to occupy the niches vacated after the departure of foreigners. They create brands from scratch, the expert explains, which “requires trendy promotion channels: advertisers begin to fight for good authors, especially in consumer goods.”

Julia Yurasova