IT companies were filmed – Newspaper Kommersant No. 22 (7467) dated 02/07/2023

The Russian outdoor advertising market as a whole has reached pre-pandemic levels in terms of the number of surfaces sold, although in Moscow it is still below 2019, Admetrix calculated. For the first time, the Internet company Yandex became the leader in outdoor advertising purchases, Avito and VK also entered the top 10. IT companies and marketplaces increased their investments in outdoor advertising amid the desire to take market share from departed foreign competitors, while other advertisers redistributed part of the budgets from blocked Western social networks to this channel, experts explain.

“Kommersant” got acquainted with the data of Admetrix (a provider of monitoring data for the outdoor advertising market) on the results of 2022. It follows from them that the capacity of the Russian outdoor advertising market, excluding Moscow and St. Petersburg, in 2022 reached the pre-pandemic level: growth by 2019 was 1%, to 94 thousand surfaces.

In Moscow, the market is still 4% lower than in 2019, amounting to 26 thousand surfaces, in St. Petersburg it is 15% higher (19 thousand). In relation to 2021, growth was 1% in Moscow, 4% in St. Petersburg, and 2% in other cities. The study took into account 50 cities and only standard formats, excluding advertising on transport, at stops, in shopping centers.

Digital surfaces (screens of various types) in Moscow already account for 63% of the surfaces sold against 56% in 2021, Admetrix noted. In St. Petersburg, the share increased from 33% in 2021 to 38% in 2022, and in the other 48 cities surveyed, from 28% to 35%.

At the same time, the top 10 advertisers have changed significantly compared to 2021 (see table). Yandex became the leader in the purchase of outdoor advertising (in 2021, this position was occupied by Donstroy, and a year earlier by Tele2). Among the newcomers in the top 10 are the Avito and VK marketplaces, Ozon has moved up from the last line to the sixth. At the same time, McDonald’s, X5 Retail Group and M.Video dropped out of the top ten.

The growth of the entire outdoor advertising segment in money terms in 2022 could be 5-7%, separately in Moscow the dynamics could be higher – 10-12%, they say in the Russ Outdoor group (the largest outdoor advertising operator). The results of the year were affected, in particular, by the purchase of surfaces in support of the military operation. As previously reported by Kommersant in Russ Outdoor, the Heroes of Russia project involved 8 thousand surfaces in 200 cities of the country, the operator used his own designs for this at all points of presence, and also bought equipment from other companies. Gallery declined to comment.

Yandex explained to Kommersant that online promotion remains key for the company, but since many of its businesses are actively developing offline, such as Yandex Market and Yandex Taxi, investments in outdoor advertising have increased in 2022. Avito says the company has “generally increased budgets for all media.” Ozon notes that they used outdoor advertising to attract new users to the marketplace, VK clarifies that outdoor advertising “increases the frequency of contact with the message” (an indicator that displays the number of contacts the audience has with advertising.— “b”).

The increase in sales of outdoor advertising in money terms occurred, among other things, due to its rise in price, experts say. The growth rate of commercial load was at the limit of the operators’ capabilities, which was the reason for the rise in prices, says Anatoly Kupreev, CEO of the Posterscope agency (part of Okkam). The exit of Western companies did not have a significant impact on the outdoor advertising segment, when compared with other media, he adds: “There was a small churn, but it was offset by other advertisers.”

Marketplaces and delivery services are struggling with the outflow of customers after the lifting of anti-COVID restrictions and are seizing vacant sites amid the departure of foreign brands, so their outdoor advertising costs are growing, explains Sergey Strelkin, CEO of Oohdesk. Also, according to him, “to recover from the shock of March”, when many advertisers froze campaigns, the segment was helped by the redistribution of part of the budgets after the departure of foreign Internet platforms.

Valeria Lebedeva