Yandex is looking for employees to develop advertising business in Latin America

Yandex (MOEX: YNDX) is hiring employees who will be responsible for the development of advertising business abroad. In particular, they will have to expand the Yandex advertising network (YAN) in Chile. The network’s foreign audience is significantly smaller than the Russian one, but is growing more dynamically. Latin America is one of Yandex’s key external markets. The division of assets between Yandex NV and Russian structures will leave the latter without part of their local assets. But the company will be able to develop its advertising business – and, as experts believe, Yandex clients in Russia will take advantage of this.

“Kommersant” discovered on the Yandex LinkedIn page a vacancy for the position of head of international operations, whose main task is “the development of the international advertising business of Yandex.” The company is also looking for personnel in Chile who will be responsible for advertising projects in the country.

In particular, Yandex posted a vacancy for a business development manager: he is required to expand the use of YAN among local websites and applications, including “leading international publishers.” The Russian company is also looking for a legal consultant with the right to practice law in Chile; The job description specifies that the specialist must support adtech products, online services and marketing projects.

The company is developing an advertising business in Latin America under the international brand Yandex Ads, its division is based in Mexico. In 2023, staff hosted partner conferences in Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. Among the priority markets, Yandex Ads declares the markets of the Middle East (UAE, Turkey and Israel) and Asia (Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia). Yandex clarified that “they have been working with advertisers and publishers in about 20 countries for more than nine years.”

In January 2024, compared with December 2023, Yandex significantly increased the average daily audience of YAN for the month outside Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, as follows from the company’s public data. Without taking into account the intersection of the YAN audience and Yandex search, it grew from 10.9 million to 13.9 million, taking into account the intersection – from 11.5 million to 14.6 million. A year earlier, the figure was 9.8 million people without taking into account the intersection with search and 10.5 million – with account.

The YAN audience grew in all countries and regions designated by Yandex, but in Russia, where its volume was initially larger, the relative growth was not so pronounced. In January 2024, the average daily audience of YAN with intersection with search grew year-on-year by 14% (to 88.2 million people), and in Belarus and Kazakhstan – by 53% (to 10.4 million) and 49% (to 13. 7 million).

Latin America has traditionally been one of the key foreign markets for other Yandex projects – taxis and delivery services, weather services for business, educational services (see Kommersant dated July 29, 2022). But after the planned division of Yandex assets between the Dutch Yandex NV and the Russian MCAO Yandex, the latter will lose educational (edtech) projects abroad.

Yandex NV and its spin-off businesses will lose the opportunity to develop services that come into direct competition with the primary types of business of the Russian Yandex (see Kommersant on February 9). Based on the results of nine months of 2023, the largest portion of Yandex’s revenue (37%) comes from the “Search and Portal” segment, which includes the advertising business.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for Yandex to expand opportunities in the domestic advertising market of the Russian Federation; “all publishers and webmasters who wanted or were forced to switch to YAN have already done so,” says Dmitry Fedoseev, managing director of Hybrid Russia. At the same time, it is profitable for the company to look for advertising inventory that its clients in the Russian Federation can use: “They are interested in expanding their business outside the country, and it will be more convenient for them to work with an understandable player.” A similar thing, according to Mr. Fedoseev, happened with Google and its AdSense advertising network: “Many large international players, entering new countries, preferred to work with Google.”

Yandex’s technologies are also suitable for advertisers targeting non-Russian-speaking customers, but the company can count on more than just them, believes Ilya Notkin, founder of the advertising agency Paradigma: “The Russian diaspora abroad is an active solvent audience; recently it has been replenished with a new wave of emigrants . They know Yandex well, and Yandex technologies know them well.”

Yuri Litvinenko