Rambler&Co

Aktivs

As of July 2015:

Online editions

• Lenta.ru
• Gazeta.ru
• Afisha.ru
• Ag.ru (left the holding in December 2015)
• Autorambler.ru
• Championat.com
• Eda.ru
• Fanat.ru
• Ferra.ru - consumer electronics magazine
• Gameslife.ru
• Motor.ru
• Moslenta.ru
• Letidor.ru
• Mir.travel
• Nightparty.ru
• Kanobu.ru - game portal (left the holding in December 2015)
• Ogl.ru
• Redigo.ru is a Russian-language travel website
• Secretmag.ru (Firm Secret)

Internet services

• Rambler.ru
• LiveJournal.com
• Quto.ru - online service for the selection of new cars,
• "Runner" - contextual advertising service
• Price.ru - product comparison site
• Rambler Top 100 classifier rating
• Rambler-ICQ Fast Messaging System
• Index 20 Interactive Ad Group
• advertising seller + SOL

Print editions

• Magazine "Poster,"
• Afisha-MIR magazine,
• Afisha-Food magazine,
• The Playbill Guide Series,

• "Atelier'Poster '" (creating media for customers),
• "Picnic 'Poster'," etc.

History

2024: Expansion of the vulnerability search program on The Standoff 365 Bug Bounty platform

Rambler & Co will test its security on the Standoff Bug Bounty platform using white hackers. Positive Technologies (Positive Technologies) reported this on October 23, 2024. Read more here.

2022: Launch of vulnerability scanning program on The Standoff 365 Bug Bounty platform

On September 22, 2022, Rambler & Co announced the launch of a public vulnerability search program on The Standoff 365 Bug Bounty platform developed by Positive Technologies. Researchers are invited to test the 10 most important and well-known media holding services, including the sites "Ленты.ру," "Gazeta.Ru," "Championship," the portal "Rambler," "Rambler/News," "Rambler/Mail" and others. Thus, the holding plans to bring the security of its projects to the next level. Read more here.

2021: The departure of Maxim Tadevosyan from the post of CEO of Rambler & Co

In March 2021, Maxim Tadevosyan, who served as CEO of the Rambler & Co group, decided to focus on developing his own projects. This was reported to the Rambler Group on March 9, 2021. Read more here.

2020

Rambler closes RNS news agency

In December 2020, the RNS news agency (Rambler & Co) ceased operations. The IT and Media section of RNS.online has disappeared along with the entire site.

Former top manager of Gazprom-Media became the owner of 80% of the Rambler media perimeter

On November 10, 2020, information appeared that LLC Median"" (owns 80% of Rambler & Co., through Rambler Group which it manages its own - InternetMEDIA including, "," Lenta.ruGazeta.ru"Чемпионат.com," etc.) has been owned by the Sergey Shishkin former managing director of the entertainment division since November 9. Gazprom media"" This follows from the data of the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. As a result, Sergei Shishkin became the owner of 80% of the perimeter of the Sberbank media. More. here

2019: Rambler takes from Match TV the right to broadcast Premier League matches in Russia

On April 11, 2019, it became known that Rambler acquired the rights to broadcast the Premier League in Russia. This was confirmed by Okko CEO (part of Rambler) Ivan Grodetsky and Premier League Communications Director Ash Lord. The Premier League had previously broadcast Match TV. Read more here.

2018: Staff update

As part of the merger of Rambler & Co, Cinema Park and Formula Kino cinemas, as well as the ABC-Atticus publishing group, a single Rambler Group structure was updated in March 2018.

In particular, from March 1:

• Marina Rossinskaya was appointed Business Development Director of Rambler & Co with direct subordination to Dmitry Sergeyev, who held this position earlier, and now moved to the position of Operating Director of Rambler Group.
• Andrey Tsyper has been appointed Executive Director for Media at Rambler & Co.
• Leonid Cherny took over as managing director of the Rambler.ru portal.
• Ekaterina Tekunova has been appointed Product Director of Rambler & Co.

2017

Rambler & Co is part of Rambler Group

On December 13, 2017, Rambler & Co, Cinema Park and Formula Kino cinemas, as well as the ABC-Atticus publishing group announced the merger into the Rambler Group under a single management. As a result, a cross-media ecosystem will be created, covering "all screens" at once: mobile, computer, Smart TV and movie screen.

As a result, since 2018 Rambler Group , assets such as the Internet holding Rambler & Co (includes more than 35 media projects, including the Rambler.ru portal, online publications Lenta.ru, Gazeta.ru, Afisha.ru, Championat.com), cinema chains Cinema Park and Formula Kino, publishing group "ABC-Atticus" online movie theater and Okko.

Рамблер.ру revenue up 10%

Рамблер.ру summed up the results of 2017, which resulted in a 56% increase in EBITDA compared to 2016. The portal's revenue for 2017 increased by 10% compared to the results of 2016. Revenue for the period from 2015 to 2017. as a whole increased by 45% compared to the results of 2014.

According to the results of 2017, the total audience of the Rambler portal increased by 17% compared to the results of 2016 and amounted to 49 million unique users per month. The share of visits added 6% over the same period, and the total number of page views increased by 18% according to Yandex.Metri.

After the restart of the mobile version of the Rambler portal, the share of mobile audiences increased by 78% year-on-year. The time spent by users on the site increased by 14% - from 6.34 to 7.21 minutes. The depth of the visit on the portal added 42% over the year, which indicates the increased interest of users in Рамблер.ру, they spend more time on the portal and more actively read content on different pages. In turn, the rejuvenation of the audience of the portal and Рамблер.ру projects is evidenced by an increase in the number of users under the age of 44 by 37%.

The company also noted the increased indicators of the transformed thematic media verticals. According to Mediascope Web Index data for December 2017 compared to December 2016:

• Updating mobile versions of media verticals gave a 91% increase in mobile audience;
• Rambler/Sport ranked second in terms of weekly audience coverage on the Russian Internet among all sports resources;
• Rambler/Female, just two months after launch, ranked second in weekly audience among women's content projects;
• Rambler/Cars in two months came in third place in terms of weekly coverage among automotive content projects on the Runet;
• Rambler/Finance in two months came in second place in terms of monthly audience among Runet websites about economics and finance;
• The number of video views on all Rambler media sections increased by 66%;
• The volume of reposts of articles and news on the social network increased by 60%. Rambler's readers have become more active in sharing news and articles from our media verticals on social networks;
• Search traffic on the media sections of the portal rose by 43%, while 47% of the audience return to us weekly.

Reduction of the staff of the "Secret Firm" from 15 to 5 people

On September 25, 2017, it became known that the publication "Secret of the Company" (part of Rambler & Co) reduced its staff. The editor-in-chief of the resource Nikolai Kononov wrote about this on his Facebook.

Kononov, congratulating the readers of the publication on his 15th birthday, announced a significant reshuffle - in particular, the dissolution of the visual department and his resignation from the post of editor-in-chief in October. After him, this position will be taken by his current deputies Daria Cherkudinova and Oleg Khokhlov. At the same time, Kononov noted that the reason for the cuts is "purely economic."

In addition, Kononov announced the upcoming redesign of the Company's Secret and that the resource will refuse to publish news.

At the same time, as Vedomosti calculated, the staff of the publication will be reduced to five people instead of the current 15. According to the newspaper's sources, this was due to the fact that the budget of the Secret Firm was cut four times.

According to MediaScope, on average, 510,000 people read the Company's Secret website from desktops and laptops per month, for comparison: 4 million people read the Poster, and 1.3 million read the RNS news agency (statistics for August 2017). In 2016, the monthly audience of the Company's Secret was more than 690,000 people^[1].

Mamut bought Potanin's share and became 100% owner of the company

On January 16, 2017, Alexander Mamut's A&NN Investments fund announced that it had become the sole owner of the Rambler & Co media holding. Previously, the fund owned 50% of Rambler & Co, another half of the company belonged to businessman Vladimir Potanin. The parties did not disclose the terms of the transaction.

Earlier, Vedomosti sources close to both sides of the deal said that Mamut would pay Potanin $295 million - the amount that both businessmen agreed on back in 2013, when^[2] bought^[2]. Then Potanin invested in Rambler & Co the Internet portal Rambler and the publishing house "Afisha," Mamut - the company "Soup" (bloghosting Livejournal and others). Potanin's assets earned more and cost more, but each of the partners received parity shares, and Mamut became the managing partner. In exchange for this, Potanin received the right after 2.5 years, if he wanted to sell his share to Mamut at a fixed price - $295 million. The option expired in December 2016.

It is known that in 2007 Profmedia paid $260 million for 49% of Rambler, and in 2014 the entire combined company was estimated at about $274 million.

The best option for Mamut was to find a buyer for Rambler & Co. At this time, he could only count on a state that, through controlled funds, could buy a holding for the sake of its still large audience.

The deal between Mamut and Potanin was initially fixed in dollars, and due to the depreciation of the ruble, the value of Mamut's option almost doubled - from 9.7 billion rubles. (this figure was indicated in the official documents of Profmedia - Potanin's media asset) to 18.1 billion rubles. Vedomosti sources said earlier that Mamut tried several times to negotiate with Potanin in order to reduce the payment for Rambler & Co or postpone the exercise of the option, but could not.

"Bringing Rambler & Co's ownership stake to 100% for us is part of the long-term strategy, A&NN Investments quoted fund director Marina Grenberg as saying. The Internet and Media sector is one of the key investment areas for the A&NN fund. We see great potential both in the growth of this sector in Russia as a whole and in the development prospects of the Rambler & Co group of companies - thanks to access to an extensive audience, as well as increased technological and product expertise over the past three years. "

Rambler & Co will take 3rd place in terms of audience size in Runet, Mamut promised when creating Rambler & Co. In 2013, this holding was the fifth, in January 2017 - the fourth after Mail.ru Group, Yandex and Google, follows from Mediascope data.

2016

The key assets of the company were pledged to Otkritie Bank, in which A. Mamut is one of the owners

100% of the shares of Rambler Internet Holding LLC were pledged to Otkritie Bank until March 31, 2020, follows from the data of the Unified State Register of Legal Entities (USRUL). This was done as security for obligations under a loan agreement signed in July 2016. One of the bank's beneficiaries at that time was Rambler owner Alexander Mamut.

Rambler Internet Holding LLC is one of the main legal entities of Rambler & Co holding, which until the end of 2016 was owned on a parity basis by Alexander Mamut and Vladimir Potanin (since January 2017, 100% of the company is owned by Mamut). This LLC accounts for a significant part of the holding's revenue, it manages the Rambler.ru portal and other Internet projects^[3].

It follows from the data of the Unified State Register of Legal Entities that for the first time Otkritie Bank approved the credit line of Rambler Internet Holding LLC in September 2014 (then the loan agreement was extended - in April 2015) - shortly after Mamut began managing the holding. Otkritie is not a foreign bank for Mamut, he is its minority shareholder (owns 6.7% of the bank through Otkritie Holding).

However, a record of the availability of a credit line to Rambler appeared in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities only in August 2016. A person close to Rambler & Co shareholders says the company has been credited to Otkritie Bank before, but this year the pledge scheme was changed. This is due, among other things, to the restructuring of the holding in order to bring the ownership structure in line with the new Russian legislation (it requires the media to be under the control of Russian companies), the Vedomosti interlocutor explains, without disclosing details.

A representative of Rambler & Co Sofya Ivanova confirmed that the company has a loan from Otkrytie, but did not disclose its size. The money, she said, was raised to replenish working capital. One of the holding's former employees says that the company attracted a credit line from the bank for several billion rubles two years ago. A spokesman for the bank declined to comment.

According to the Expert RA rating agency, in the third quarter of 2016, Rambler Internet Holding LLC converted foreign currency loans into ruble ones. A person close to the holding confirms this.

Expert RA notes the high level of debt burden of Rambler Internet Holding LLC, the lack of the ability to take an additional loan on bail.

Hackers claim access to data of almost 1 million Rambler users

The site Leakedsource, specializing in information security, told^[4] about obtaining a database with almost 1 million data from Rambler.ru users who were stolen as a result of a hacker attack on February 17, 2012^[5].

Leakedsource is a search engine for hacked accounts. According to the resource, each of the 98,167,935 database records contains a login or email address, password, ICQ number and other internal data. This base was directed by Leakedsource by a daykalif@xmpp.jp user who previously provided the base of the service that was also hacked in 2012 Last.fm.

Leakedsource claims that the database is real: its data was verified with the help of journalist xakep.ru Maria Nefedova. Her three friends, whose data was in the received database, were sent the first part of their passwords, and they ended them with one hundred percent accuracy by entering the remaining 4-6 characters.

User passwords were Rambler.ru kept in the public domain, according to LeakedSource. The five most popular included "asdasd, found more than 700 thousand times," asdasd123 "and" 12345, "found more than 400 thousand times, as well as" 000000 "and" 666666. "

Rambler & Co said that the data leak will not pose problems for users, Vedomosti writes. "There is no problem here: this database surfaced back in 2014, after analyzing it, we revealed that 4 million active users were compromised - all of them had their passwords changed, of course," the publication quotes a representative of Rambler & Co Sofia Ivanova. According to her, some percentage of passwords can still be suitable, since users use passwords like "123456," which are hacked through the dictionary. She also did not rule out the option that after forcibly changing the password, the user could enter the old one again.

Reboot "Rambler.Real Estate"

In August 2016, it became known that Rambler & Co was rebooting the Rambler Real Estate project, fired the head and dissolved the team.

Evgenia Vladimirova was fired from the position of the head of Real Estate. Instead, the project was headed by the creator of the automotive classification AM.ru Oleg Golubtsov. At the same time, Golubtsov continued to lead the AM.ru, combining two positions. He intends to do a new Real Estate from scratch with a AM.ru team in St. Petersburg. It is assumed that the project will become a classic classifide - as "Cian.ru" or "Avito." This plan is not new - Rambler & Co voiced it on February 3, 2015.

At the same time, only in mid-June 2016, the new web version of Real Estate was restarted. The mobile application was also prepared for release, but was never released, the source said. It was made by former developers of "Cian.ru," who came to "Real Estate" in the fall of 2015. Now the project team has been dissolved. The developers, about thirty people, were transferred to other projects of the holding. At least one iOS developer goes to Ленту.ру. The fate of the rest of the team, including the productors, is still^[6] is^[6].

The holding already restarted Real Estate in February 2015. Immediately after the restart, at the end of February, the commercial director of the Finance and Real Estate vertical, Alexander Fomenkov, left (Rambler spoke about this only on the last day of summer). Six months after the restart, Rambler & Co bought the AgentOn SaaS platform for real estate agents. Now it has integrated with Real Estate. Sergey Smirnov, head of AgentOn at the time of sale, left the project in February 2016. In fact, the teams of AgentOn and Real Estate were merged at that moment, and legally all employees later moved to the new Rambler-Real Estate LLC, created in June 2016. According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the general director of this legal entity is Rafael Abrahamyan, the holding's executive director since July 2015. However, in fact, the head of the Rambler Real Estate project reports to the management of the Rambler.ru portal - now it is Marina Rossinskaya (from the same July 2015), and he, in turn, directly to Dmitry Sergeyev, executive director for development of Rambler & Co.

An acquaintance of the previous executive director of the holding, Dmitry Malov, says that he was also the initiator of the purchase of AgentOn. However, the purchase took place in July, but by August Malov left the post and was replaced by Abrahamyan. Probably, with the change of the holding's leadership, the Real Estate development plan has also changed.

The source of "Roy!" claims that Dmitry Sergeyev put pressure on the management of "Real Estate." In particular, he spoke rudely with Evgenia Vladimirova, and also did not allocate money to the project for marketing. Sergeyev insisted that marketing services be purchased from his own sister, who works for the small agency Tactio. Previously, when Sergeyev led the Championship, it was known that he used the services of Tactio.

Golubtsov is a native of the "old Rambler" (not yet a holding), then the creator of the AM.ru, automobile classification, which is not the second or even the third on the market. Rambler & Co acquired this project in January 2016. However, Oleg Golubtsov managed Rambler's car services since July 2015. According to SimilarWeb, AM.ru loses 20 times in Drom.ru traffic, more than 10 times in "Авто.ру" and even almost twice in Quto.ru, which is also part of Rambler & Co. Does Golubtsov have the opportunity to make a classic classification on real estate, when Avito, Cian.ru and other players have already entrenched in the market? The answer is not coming soon.

2015

Almost all companies of the holding are unprofitable, with the exception of "Ленты.ру" and "Газеты.ру"

Rambler & Co does not disclose the full financial statements of the holding, but the SPARK-Interfax database publishes RAS indicators of legal entities included in the holding. From these data it follows that almost all companies of the holding are unprofitable - with the exception of "Ленты.ру" and "Газеты.ру."

Thus, the revenue of Rambler Internet Holding LLC in 2015 amounted to 1.6 billion rubles. loss - 49 million rubles. 85% of the LLC's revenue comes from advertising on its sites. In addition, Rambler has a fairly high share of the largest buyer in the revenue structure - 43%. One of the holding's former employees says that we are most likely talking about Yandex, whose search and contextual advertising system have been on Rambler's projects since 2011^[3].

CJSC Soup Media (manages Livejournal bloghost) revenue in 2015 amounted to 563 million rubles, loss - 802 million rubles.

JSC Begun"" (manages the context advertising system of the same name) revenue in 2015 amounted to 269.8 million rubles, loss - 71.2 million rubles.

LLC Current Events"" - 432.3 million rubles. and 213.6 million rubles, respectively.

The advertising agency RA Index 20 LLC has 576.9 million rubles. and 126.9 million rubles.

The holding structure also includes Rambler DS LLC with revenue in 2015 of 707.9 million rubles. and a loss of 47.1 million rubles. and Rambler BS LLC with revenue of 127.5 million rubles. and a loss of 14.9 million rubles.

Sites Kanobu.ru and Ag.ru leave the holding

In December 2015, it became known that Rambler & Co holding and the game publication Kanobu will share joint assets and cease to be partners, Vedomosti writes, citing its sources. Kanobu founder Haji Makhtiev confirmed the information: "This process has begun, it will end early next year."

Makhtiev told Roem.ru that he will have the media part of the project - Kanobu.ru and Ag.ru sites - and the rights to the trademark. The holding will receive the service part of the company - game portals epic.kanobu.ru and games.kanobu.ru. Makhtiev clarifies that the subprojects will remain on the previous domains.

Earlier, the publication was looking for an investor, but now it is not going to do this, says Makhtiev Roem.ru. Now the sole owner of the publication will be Makhtiev himself.

2014

Year-over-year audience decline of 15%

Rambler & Co's resource attendance is falling. The monthly audience of all sites of the holding, according to TNS Web Index, from April 2013 to April 2014 decreased by 15%, from 38.8 million to 33.6 million people.

At this time, Rambler & Co earns ten times less than Yandex and, according to TNS, ranks fifth in Russia among Internet holdings in terms of traffic to its resources. But in the early 2000s, Rambler was the leading search engine on the Runet and was ahead of Yandex in terms of audience size and income.

At this time, Rambler News generates traffic to the pages of partner media, second only to Yandex.Novosti and Google News. Another idea of ​ ​ Molibog's team promised significant success - to combine the Price.ru website with the Runner contextual advertising system and other Rambler services into an e-commerce platform.

31.6% - the audience of the main page of the Rambler.ru portal fell by so much in April 2014 compared to April 2013. Other fall leaders were Rambler Mail (-21.4%) and LiveJournal (-16.1%)

From March 2013 to March 2014, judging by the TNS Web Index, the attendance of Gazeta.Ru and Lenta.ru increased (due to the growing interest of readers in the events in Ukraine), as well as the Championat.com website (the Olympics helped). But the popularity of the Afisha.ru portal has increased thanks to the launch of new projects. For example, in October 2013, three new media projects "Posters" started: "Poster-air" (cultural news), "Poster-city" (news of city life) and "Poster-wave" (music). The goal was to, says Ilya Krasilshchik, Afisha's director of products, to add those who are interested in news to the usual audience of Afisha.ru visiting the site for the sake of the schedule of films and theaters and reviews of performances and films. By March 2014, three media projects had recruited almost 900,000 unique users (visiting only these sections on the Afisha.ru), that is, a quarter of all traffic Afisha.ru.

Name change to Rambler & Co

On April 15, 2014, Afisha-Rambler-Soup of Alexander Mamut and Vladimir Potanin changed its name to Rambler & Co, according to a letter received by employees^[7]& Co.

The name was chosen at a competition in which employees of the company participated.

In total, more than 200 variants of the name of the new company were proposed. Rambler & Co offered three employees independently of each other, specified in the letter. The corporate website of the combined company was also launched.

Mamut himself headed the company

In April 2014, Alexander Mamut dismissed the head of Afisha-Rambler-SUP (later Rambler & Co) Pyotr Zakharov and announced that he himself would become the CEO of the company.

The frequent change of top managers in controlled companies is Alexander Mamut's favorite technique. For example, during the year of ownership of Euroset, he changed four teams. But now all the work, it seems, he will be forced to do himself.

Sources of the Federation Council from the "club of former directors" believe that the arrival of Mamut as CEO is useful for the company. But they are convinced that the oligarch will lose a lot of time on the next reorganization of the team. This means that the development of new products will be frozen again, and some advertisers will run away.

"Mamutu will

quickly get bored with dealing with current issues. I think that by the fall he will appoint someone instead of himself, "Igor Ashmanov predicted

.

Rambler & Co has already made its choice de facto - to be not a service company, but a media one, said Demyan Kudryavtsev, former general director of Kommersant Publishing House. The irony of fate is that the main traffic of Rambler & Co is still brought by services: the Rambler.ru aggregator and the LiveJournal blog platform, a large audience at the Post. But Rambler & Co will no longer be able to develop as a service company, even if it wants, it is too risky and late. We need development specialists, of whom the company now has almost no left, and huge investments in technologies with an unclear result. On the media field, the prospects are also not the most rosy, primarily in terms of advertising revenues: the high political risks of independent Internet media scare advertisers away.

The problem of Rambler & Co, Kudryavtsev believes, is in the long history of poor management and the frequent change of approaches and teams. Alexander Mamut, according to Kudryavtsev, did the right thing by taking on the functions of manager, but perhaps it is too late. However, Olga Turishcheva points to the striking survivability of the Rambler. The company has experienced multiple changes in the course of development, owners and directors, they tried to "dissolve" it first in "Poster," then in SUP, but it still holds among the largest players in the Internet market.

If the period of uncertainty in the holding drags on, Mamut risks not only earning a reputation as an ineffective manager, but also suffering financial damage.

Zakharov's new strategy: video and mobile content

At the beginning of 2014, sources of the Company's Secret told, it became clear that the holding's financial performance for 2013 would be worse than in 2012. Managers expected explanations from Zakharov on which way the company would develop - as a content provider or still remain a developer of Internet services (mail, blog hosting, etc.).

On April 14, 2014, Rambler & Co CEO Petr Zakharov presented a new strategy for the Internet holding at a management meeting with managing shareholder Alexander Mamut, a source familiar with the content of the presentation told ITAR-TASS, and one of the company's managers confirmed.

A public presentation of the strategy was scheduled for Tuesday, but the company rescheduled the event. The official reason is "a flurry of applications for participation from advertisers, partners, bloggers and journalists," explained Sofia Ivanova, a representative of Rambler & Co.

The new strategy is focused on the development of video content and the distribution of advertising according to the native advertising model, a source close to the top management of the media holding told ITAR-TASS. This information was confirmed by a source familiar with the company's materials. The native advertising scheme provides for the placement of information materials on Internet resources marked "as advertising."

The strategy also provides for the development of mobile content, says one of the sources, with a reference point in the future for mobile television, and the creation of its own media center with the ability to organize the recording of video programs.

Within three years, the company expects to receive about 20% of revenue from video content, says a source familiar with Zakharov's presentation. According to him, as part of the task of increasing revenue from video content, the media holding is negotiating with a number of video services, including Tvigle, to use their technologies to create its own video platform^[8].

When the presentation of Zakharov's strategy took place, it disappointed everyone. Employees said that during the year of work, Zakharov could come up with something more serious than beautiful pictures and a new Rambler & Co logo. Some managers have applied to leave. "I'm tired of all this confusion," one of the resigned project managers told the Federation Council. The situation in the company was heating up.

The representative of Rambler & Co Sofya Ivanova assures that in the year that has passed since the merger of Afisha-Rambler and SUP Media, the company has managed to do a lot. Ivanov considers the most significant results to be the unification of previously disparate services of commerce, marketing, personnel into single structures, the launch of three Afisha projects, the restart of LiveJournal, the updating of the Championat.com and the expansion of the Rambler Box Office cinema and concert ticket sales service (it was a "button" on the Afisha.ru, became a separate aggregator). However, these achievements cannot still be credited to the new leadership of Rambler & Co. According to Ilya Krasilshchik, the media projects "Afisha" were conceived even before the unification. The Rambler-cash desk service was launched in 2011 by the Molibog team, and the need to restart LJ was discussed long before the merger.

Dismissal of Timchenko from the post of chief editor of the Lenta.ru

In March 2014, Alexander Mamut dismissed Galina Timchenko, editor-in-chief of the popular Lenta.ru portal, known for its free thought. Alexey Goreslavsky, formerly deputy general director of Afisha-Rambler-SUP for external communications, was appointed in her place. Following Timchenko, 68 employees left the company Lenta.ru. Due to the change in the editorial staff, the number of news published on the Lenta.ru, as the representative of Rambler & Co Sofya Ivanova said, decreased by 2.5 times, and the marketing activity of the publication in social networks in April decreased significantly. As a result, the monthly audience of Lenta.ru, according to the TNS Web Index monitoring, decreased from 10.9 million in March to 7.3 million people in April 2014.

2013

Molybog and Kruglova leave. Zakharov - the new general director

In May 2013, the management of the combined Rambler-Afisha-SUP company announced the structure of the holding.

The chairman of the board of directors of the company was the owner of SUP Media Alexander Mamut. Along with him and the general director of the company, Peter Zakharov, he presents top managers of the ProfMedia holding (it previously included Afisha-Rambler), in particular, its president Olga Paskina.

Petr Zakharov was previously responsible for promoting Apple products in the EMEA region and worked in London. There he and Mamut met.

The company's media assets were separated into a separate structure. It was supervised by Julia Minder, appointed Deputy General Director of the combined company for media resources. At the same time, Minder will resign as general director of Ленты.ру.

The letter of the general director emphasized that it was only about creating a structure that would manage the business of the media part of the company (Afisha, Лента.ру, Газета.ру, Чемпионат.com). There are no planned mergers of media assets, the editorial policy and business of each of the publications will develop independently of each other.

Other deputies of Zakharov were also named - on organizational, financial, commercial and other issues. In particular, it was announced the appointment of Alexei Goreslavsky to the post of deputy director for external communications.

The deputy general director for the products of the combined company (Rambler, Kanobu, LiveJournal.com, Quto, Redigo, Letidor) was appointed later. Until the appointment of the deputy for products, Petr Zakharov will personally oversee this area.

The letter of the general director also announces the resignation of Nikolai Molibog, who served as general director of Afisha-Rambler. According to Molibog himself, his departure is due to the fact that in the new company he did not find a "position that objectively suits all sides." Following Nikolai Molibog, the company's executive director Ekaterina Kruglova announced her departure.

Key posts in the Poster-Rambler projects were taken by people from SUP Media, and another native of Apple, Steingrimur Muri Arnason, headed the development of products. But the increase in the number of users in early 2013, caused by the restart of the Rambler.ru portal, had to be supported by marketing events. However, all events were frozen, and site traffic fell again.

"Zakharov is a smart, erudite manager," says one of the company's former top managers. "But he was used to working in a large company, where everything was established, and believed that everything would do itself. And what resources, what money, he was not interested in. "

The problem was also that due to the merger of the two companies, all the usual business processes were violated: from issuing business trips and purchasing stationery to signing contracts with content suppliers.

The audience of the entire holding steadily decreased, but several projects continued to gain popularity, despite the organizational chaos.

Association with SUP Media Vladimir Potanin, new gender - Peter Zakharov

On March 28, 2013, Alexander Mamut's A&NN investment group and Vladimir Potanin's Interros holding decided to combine the assets of SUP Media and the Joint Company Afisha and Rambler into a single holding. As a result of the transaction, Mamut received the status of managing shareholder and the post of chairman of the holding's board of directors. Former Apple top manager Petr Zakharov became the general director of the updated structure.

Management estimates that the new company will have an audience of more than 35 million unique users. According to this indicator, it will become the third in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet.

"The merger will lead to the creation of a new company - the third largest audience in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet. The company will become one of the leading providers of online services and the main source of information about socio-political, business, cultural and sports events in Runet - both on computer screens and on smartphones, both in text and video format, "said Alexander Mamut

.

Vladimir Potanin, in turn, noted:

"This is a unique combination of leading Russian online brands in the rapidly growing Internet market. Everyone will benefit from the merger: shareholders, users, partners and, in general, high-tech business in Russia. "

"

At first Mamut had the euphoria of blogs. But then it turned out that other social networks were crowding them, "says German Klimenko, founder of LiveInternet

.

If in the late 2000s the LiveJournal web service was one of the five most popular Runet resources, then by the time LJ merged, according to TNS, it dropped to 12th place. The site often "dropped" due to technical problems, and its design was outdated. In addition, LiveJournal turned out to be chronically unprofitable (judging by the financial statements of CJSC SUP Media in SPARK-Interfax). The reasons for the losses, according to German Klimenko, are a large staff (SUP Media employs about 600 people) and the wrong model of LJ monetization. So, the company offered bloggers who do not want to see media advertising in LiveJournal a special service - paid accounts: pay $20 and will not see advertising for a year. Many active bloggers started paid accounts and "closed" from advertising, which caused an outflow of advertisers. To rectify the situation, the SUP Media administration introduced a special currency - "LJetons," which could be bought for ordinary money at the rate of 100 tokens for $1. Bloggers were supposed to receive tokens from advertisers for posting ads and for paid shares. But SUP Media made a mistake by releasing too many tokens - 30 million pieces. It was impossible to turn them back into money, and a "black market" was formed in the blogosphere to trade tokens at a discount of 30-50%. This was used by advertisers - to the detriment of SUP Media's income.

2012

Annual revenue of 4.2 billion rubles excluding VAT, debts and losses

The financial situation of Rambler & Co at the end of 2012 cannot be called prosperous.

The total revenue of the holding companies in 2012 amounted to 4.2 billion rubles. excluding VAT. The main revenue generator is services: Rambler.ru, the Runner and LiveJournal contextual advertising system, which account for almost 60% of the turnover.

According to SPARK-Interfax, Rambler & Co's operating performance

• ZAO "Runner" Revenue under RAS in 2012 - 502.9 million rubles. Net loss - 84.7 million rubles.

• Afisha Company LLC Revenue - 797.3 million rubles. Net loss - 45.5 million rubles.

• Rambler Internet Holding LLC Revenue - 1.28 billion rubles. Net loss - 274.1 million rubles.

• Price Express LLC Revenue - 103 million rubles. Net loss - 33.7 million rubles.

• LLC Lenta.Ru Revenue - 238.5 million rubles. Net profit - 16.8 million rubles.

• CJSC Gazeta.Ru Revenue - 300.4 million rubles. Net profit - 30 thousand rubles.

• CJSC SUP Media Revenue - 782.1 million rubles. Net profit - 51.6 million rubles.

But all major operating companies are saddled with exorbitant debt or unprofitable. For example, the accumulated uncovered loss of CJSC SUP Media in 2012 amounted to 1.04 billion rubles, and the volume of long-term debt - 1.55 billion rubles, which is twice as much as the revenue of SUP Media in 2012 (hereinafter financial indicators are given according to the financial statements under RAS from SPARK-Interfax). SUP Media is chronically unprofitable and makes ends meet only through loans.

The operating activities of both "Posters" and "Rambler," according to sources, are quite profitable. But all operating profit of both companies is spent on paying interest on loans that were "hanged" on both companies by its owner Profmedia. As a result, minus. Media assets - Lenta.ru, Gazeta.Ru, Championat.ru - bring a small profit, but relatively small revenue - 200-300 million rubles. each.

Bet on aggregation of news from the media, sharp growth in traffic

What information resources need to be developed, managers from Afisha determined only by mid-2012. Nikolay Molibog decided to turn the Rambler.ru portal into a unique aggregator of news and reviews from the media, they would be provided to the user in a personalized manner, depending on his interests. Interests are investigated by analyzing sites that the user visited before entering the Rambler.ru. Another feature is that larger aggregators - Yandex.News and Google News - select news from the media automatically, and on Rambler, stories automatically selected by a special program of 3 thousand partner media are also filtered manually, by their own editorial office. Therefore, the selection is of a better quality. Some projects, such as Rambler Cards, were closed. As a source from Molibog's team explains, "the development of cartographic services turned out to be a race in which tens of millions of dollars had to be invested annually."

At the end of 2012, the main page was restarted Rambler.ru. And immediately there was a significant surge in attendance: the monthly audience jumped from 8.05 million unique visitors in December 2012 to 12.07 million in January 2013, and the attendance of Rambler News over the same period increased by 54%. But the management of Afisha-Rambler did not have time to complete the new initiatives: according to the source, "the rocket was shot down on takeoff."

2011

Abandoning your own search engine and switching to Yandex search

In January 2011, it became known that the United Company "Afishi" and Rambler will replace its search with a partner, said several people close to this company and its partners. Negotiations have been going on since the fall of 2010 with Yandex and Google, this was confirmed by managers close to them^[9].

By that time, the Rambler search engine ranked only fifth among the company's monthly audience projects - after the main page of the portal, Rambler News, Lenta.ru and Rambler Mail.

""Poster "is just a magazine on the Internet, and the search is a server factory. People from Afisha, as soon as they realized that they would spend many millions of dollars on servers every year and at the same time scold them all the time for a small market share, immediately closed the search, "said Igor Ashmanov, General Director of Ashmanov and Partners.

The representative of Yandex said that the company is interested in large sites with good traffic. But, most likely, a search from Google will be installed on the portal, a source in the Rambler partner company said: the company recently approved this partnership. The agreement has not yet been signed, he says and confirms a source close to Google. The general director of the combined company, Nikolai Molibog, argued that the search decision had not yet been made. He confirmed the fact of negotiations with Yandex and Google.

An official familiar with the discussion of the deal emphasized: in 2008 it was about the sale of a Russian asset ("Runner"), which would give foreigners an advantage in the Russian online advertising market, now assets are not sold.

The Mail.ru, which refused to cooperate with Yandex, had no problems with installing Google search. A senior official said at the time that the authorities did not intervene in the negotiations between Mail.ru and Google. But people close to both sides of that deal said that the shareholders were Mail.ru approved by the Kremlin.

According to Liveinternet, from the beginning of 2008 to January 2011, Rambler's share fell from 11 to 1.5%. For Rambler, the partnership with Google will be comfortable: the development of its own search engine is costly, and the result is unpredictable, says German Klimenko, founder of Liveinternet. Cooperation with Yandex is difficult due to Runner, which has been a reseller of Google ads on Runet for about a year and a direct competitor to the Russian search engine. A person close to the negotiators between Google and Rambler agreed with this opinion: the Google system is more compatible with the Begun business, and the increase in the search share of the American search engine will also affect the growth of Begun revenues.

On June 23, 2011^[9], which Rambler installed on its portal a search from Yandex and the Yandex.Direct contextual advertising system. Earlier, the portal used its search, which was monetized through the advertisements of the Runner company (51% owned by Rambler). Rambler will receive from this partnership the best search in Runet and new business opportunities for Begun, which has become a reseller of Yandex, says Rambler spokesman Vladislav Kreinin.

The parties did not disclose the terms of the division of advertising revenues. Two sources close to the negotiators know that Rambler and "Runner" will receive about 60%. Representatives of Yandex and Rambler do not comment on this. The share of Rambler search has been declining for a long time, now it is only 1.4%. The share of "Runner" was falling too. Now, according to iContext, it is 10%.

In winter, Google and Rambler agreed on a partnership and signed a preliminary agreement, a source close to the negotiators says, but Yandex offered better conditions. Google offered similar conditions, a source close to the negotiators objects. A Google spokesman declined to comment.

Runner CEO Alexei Romanenkov expects that thanks to Yandex, Rambler will increase the number of search queries (and therefore the audience to which advertising is broadcast). The old search from Rambler could not exist for long. In any case, the "runner" would have to share with any of the search engines, notes Anna Lepetukhina, an analyst at Troika Dialog.

Yandex received a partner with an audience of 15 million people, Yandex has 28.4 million (TNS data for April). This will allow the company to partially restore its position after breaking with the Mail.ru that changed the Yandex engine to Google, says German Klimenko, founder of the Liveinternet statistics service.

In 2010, Rambler earned $8-9 million on contextual advertising, which is about 2% of Yandex's revenue, Lepetukhin estimates. At the same time, part of the revenue will have to be shared with Rambler. So the financial indicators of Yandex, although they will grow, are insignificant, Lepetukhina is sure. The deal is more important in terms of image and expansion of Yandex's partner network, she summarizes.

New Rambler design launch

On June 1, 2011, almost a year after merging with Afisha and changing management, the Rambler Internet portal launches a new design^[9] on June 6, the company launched the first product in a new design. The corporate identity and logo were developed by art director Irina Voloshina (author of the design of all Poster products) along with New York designer Eugene Timerman, who worked with brands such as Virgin and Intel.

At the same time, Rambler and Afisha will launch three new products: an Internet service and applications for mobile devices from Afisha Mir, aimed at travelers (travel guides and recommendations to visit attractions), the Мотор.ру car magazine and the Rambler movie ticket service. Movie tickets are sold on partner websites, where the user can read reviews, says a Rambler representative. For sites, this is a way to offer additional service and monetize content, and for cinemas - the ability to increase ticket sales.

The company's strategy is to combine the media expertise of Afisha and Lenta.ru (part of Rambler) with the technological capabilities of Rambler, Molibog told Vedomosti: media projects form user preferences, and Rambler services help you make a choice and purchase a service or product. There is logic in this strategy, because now there is no such large service in Runet and Rambler could finally find a niche, says Troika Dialog analyst Anna Lepetukhina. Creating services based on media products "Poster" is a good idea, she believes, since "Poster" has a large and very loyal audience that trusts its recommendations.

Purchase from VimpelCom of the game portal AG.ru

In December 2011, Rambler-Games acquired the AG.ru gaming portal from VimpelCom, the audience of which, according to the Rambler Top-100 counter, in October 2011 amounted to more than 2 million people.

The Absolute Games resource, opened in 1998, is one of the oldest gaming sites in Russia and contains the largest catalog of games in Russian. The acquisition will allow Rambler to increase the audience of hardcore players, the total number of which in Russia, according to the CEO of Rambler Games, is 7 million people.

According to him, taking into account the Kanobu Network acquired in June 2011, more than 5 million of them will now use services owned by the company. Rambler assumes that by 2015 the audience of online games in Runet will reach 25 million people.

2010

Molybog from Afisha replaces Turishcheva as CEO

On July 28, it became known that the general director of Rambler Olga Turishcheva was leaving this post. Turishcheva will join the board of directors of the company that merged Rambler and Afisha, and in this position will oversee the merger of these assets. A "single digital platform" will be created on the basis of Rambler.

The current general director of Afisha Nikolai Molibog headed the combined company. The positions of product director and executive director of the new company were taken by two deputy general directors of Afisha - Dmitry Stepanov and Ekaterina Kruglova. Prior to that, Stepanov advised Rambler on strategy for several months, sources close to this company said earlier.

"The merger of companies is part of the" Profmedia "strategy to create an integrated digital platform reflecting the growing importance of the Internet in the media, the words of the President of" Profmedia "Rafael Akopov are quoted in the message. According to him, the redistribution of advertising budgets from print media in favor of online platforms and the convergence of distribution channels are trends that change the face of the industry. The main role is played by content, brand and scale, which will become the strengths of the company being formed, "he summarizes

.

"Turishcheva established operational management - implemented planning for the year, normal business processes. And we were food guys. One information product was tried, if it did not work, another was launched, "said Nikolai Molibog, who worked in the combined company for three years

.

Sale of Big City magazine to Dozhd holding

In September 2010, the Big City magazine was acquired by the Dozhd media holding owned by Alexander Vinokurov and Natalya Sindeeva from the combined Rambler-Afisha company.

Profmedia unites Rambler and Poster

In the summer of 2010, Profmedia decided to merge Rambler with its other asset, the Afisha publishing house. In addition to the magazine of the same name, Poster had a popular infotainment website Afisha.ru with a monthly audience of 3.6 million people (as of December 2010).

2009

Delisting with LSE

• Rambler delisted from the London Stock Exchange (LSE) on December 31. Since its IPO in 2005, Rambler has fallen in price by half.

• The company's capitalization in November 2009 is $72 million.

• Troika Dialog acquired the shares of Rambler, as a result of which it received 3.03%. The transaction took place on December 23, 2009, a few days before the delisting of Rambler shares from the AIM site of the London Stock Exchange (held on December 31). On the last day of trading, December 30, Rambler was worth $5.66, and Troika's package was worth $2.64 million. Prior to that, Rambler shares were bought by its largest shareholder, Prof-Media. In November-December 2009, this holding brought its stake in Rambler from 54% to 88%, buying about 24% for about $31 million ($6 per share), which ensured the possibility of delisting.

Turishcheva new CEO

In 2009, Mark Opzumer left the post of general director, he was replaced by ex-marketing director of VimpelCom Olga Turishcheva. She took up operational management, which for several years was neglected by her predecessors.

For the first six months, Olga Turishcheva figured out what 400 Rambler employees were doing. She remembers catching employees and asking them about job duties. Just like Tsar Ivan the Terrible in the film "Ivan Vasilyevich changes his profession": "Whose will you be?"

"When I came to Rambler, the company was divided into separate principalities. How it functions in general was not clear. I was invited to develop a Rambler strategy, but I had to engage in operational management, "Olga Turishcheva recalled

.

For example, she formed a product committee in the company, at which products preparing for launch began to be discussed. Before the committee there was no - the decision was made by the triumvirate of the protagonists: financial director Nikita Sergienko, director for the development and development of projects Arkady Moreinis and director for corporate development Vitaly Rudenko. Arkady Moreinis soon left Rambler. And the stumbling block for the new director was again a search engine, whose monthly audience from January 2009 to July 2010 decreased from 5.9 million to 5.2 million people. This, in turn, negatively affected the volume of revenue from contextual advertising.

Investment was urgently needed. There was a lot of money in the company's accounts, but the last investments in technology were made in 2002, Turishcheva recalls. For several months, she sought from Profmedia to allocate several million dollars for new servers to keep the search afloat. Olga Turishcheva considers her achievements that she managed to make the company more transparent from the point of view of management, optimize the organizational structure and reduce costs.

In 2009, Rambler's EBITDA amounted to 426 million rubles, almost twice as much as in 2008. But the revenue from Rambler fell: in 2009 it was 2.26 billion rubles. against 2.54 billion rubles. in 2008

"I overestimated my abilities, could not attract Internet users to the company who can create new bright products," Turishcheva admits

.

• As of July 2009, the Rambler search engine processed about 12 million requests per day. For comparison, the number of queries in the most popular search engine in the world Google was 1.4 billion.

• On July 1, 2009, Rambler launched Virtus, a communications service.

1st half of the year: reduction in revenue in rubles by 17.5%

Rambler Media revenue in the 1st half of 2009 amounted to $30.8 million (1.02 billion rubles) against $51.7 million (1,236 billion rubles) in the first six months of 2008. Revenue reduction in dollars - 40.4%, in rubles - by 17.5%. Rambler Media's consolidated net loss under IFRS in the first half of 2009 increased 4 times to $2.1 million (68 million rubles) against a net loss of $0.5 million (11 million rubles) for the same period in 2008, the company said.

Most of all, revenue from contextual advertising fell - by 45.3% to $12.7 million (by 24% in rubles to 419 million rubles). The context advertising system "Runner" (Rambler - 51%) brought in $8.9 million (296 million rubles) - 1.8 times less than a year earlier. The contextual advertising market as a whole grew in the first half of the year by 5% in rubles, Mindshare Interaction calculated. For the year, according to Liveinternet, the share of Rambler search fell from 11.4% to 4.2%, three years ago the share of Rambler was 20.3%.

Rambler's revenue from media advertising also fell - by 36.1% to $13.1 million (by 12% in rubles to 432 million). And the market, according to Mindshare, grew by 4% to 2.5 billion rubles. According to TNS, from December to June, Rambler's monthly audience decreased by 6% to 11.1 million, the audience of its competitors increased.

According to the results of 2009, Rambler predicts a decrease in revenue in ruble terms compared to 2008 by 15%.

2008

Year-end revenue growth to $110 million (+ 59 %)

Rambler's revenue grew by 59% in 2008 and amounted to $110 million. EBITDA rose 112% to $16.1 million. For the first time, the company made a net profit from its current operations. Consolidated revenue from contextual advertising over the past period increased by 89% to $47 million. Revenue from banner advertising, despite the slowdown in growth in the fourth quarter of 2008, increased by 49% to $49.5 million. The cash balance as of December 31, 2008 is $29 million, including $4 million in Begun before the payment of a stake to minority shareholders. Significant cost-cutting measures were also taken, including staff reductions from 730 (31 October 2008) to 660 (31 December 2008) employees. Further cost reductions are planned for 2009. The company has no debts.

Putin did not allow Rambler to sell Google's Runner

Rambler tried to establish a Google search for himself and sell the Runner contextual advertising service to the American company - the Federal Antimonopoly Service did not approve the deal: it seemed to the buyer's ownership structure was opaque. The true reason for the ban was the negative attitude of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin towards posting a foreign search on the Russian website, people close to Rambler shareholders said; Putin's spokesman denied this.

"Rambler" remained with his own - with "Runner" and his own search engine. "Rambler" had no other development scenario.

Starting the Авторамблер.ру site

In May 2008, Rambler announced the launch of a new automotive site. "Autorambler" is a catalog of cars officially supplied to Russia, containing all brands, models and configurations. The description of the cars includes basic characteristics - body type, engine power, etc., as well as all kinds of options - from upholstery and electric mirrors to ventilated seats with a built-in back massager.

The site also provides users with the ability to search for used car ads on dozens of popular automotive Internet sites.

2007

Rambler TV sale and first profit

Consolidated revenue of $69.1 million. Net profit - $5.7 million (2007 was the first profitable year for Rambler, however, mainly due to the sale of Rambler TV for $23 million). Profitability EBITDA for - amounted to 11.1%.

Mark Opzumer appointed head of the company, purchase of "Runner" for $40 million for resale Google

In the spring of 2007, Profmedia appointed new CEO Mark Opzumer, former vice president of the European office of Yahoo!, to the company. Opzumer, who came to Moscow every month for several days from London, was remembered for his love of the liver and the habit of holding meetings with managers in the lobby, in full view of employees and visitors. Opzumer paid all his attention to preparing a strategic deal that was supposed to change the future of Rambler. In early 2007, McKinsey analysts hired by Opzumer recommended that he acquire a controlling stake in Runner, the developer of a contextual advertising system for search engines. The contextual advertising market has grown and is still growing, and the Runner seller Finam offered favorable conditions.

Analysts also advised Rambler to abandon its own search, as its development becomes less and less cost-effective every year. For example, Yandex now spends $100 million a year on improving search technologies. And Opzumer came up with a scheme: stop developing a search engine, put a partner search from Google on the main page of Rambler, and sell Runner to the same Google for $140 million. The company would make an additional profit, Google - a ready-made audience and a significant share in the market for contextual advertising and search processing.

Rambler bought a controlling stake in Runner from Finam for about $40 million, but the elegant combination upset that FAS blocked the sale of Runner to Google.

2006

Loss at the end of the year $3 million.

At the end of the year, Rambler suffered a loss of $3 million. Profitability EBITDA - 5.3%.

Profmedia acquired 48.8% of Rambler shares for $260 million

At the end of 2006, when Profmedia holding acquired 48.8% of Rambler shares for $260 million and became the company's largest shareholder. The rest of the shares were then held by investment funds and in free float on the London Stock Exchange. In the fall of 2006, the company solemnly celebrated the decade of the search engine, its managers promised to further improve the service. But it turned out differently.

Purchase of Price.ru

In January 2006, Rambler acquired a majority stake in Price Express, which owns Price.ru.

1996: Dmitry Kryukov and Sergey Lysakov founded the company

Rambler was founded in 1996 by Dmitry Kryukov and Sergey Lysakov.

Notes