East-West Digital News 17 October 2012
The Rambler-Afisha group, which owns a 51.1% stake in Begun, a Russian contextual advertising service, is in the process of acquiring the remaining 49.9% in a bid to consolidate its e-commerce and e-marketing related assets.
Begun has been in business since 2002. In the contextual advertising segment, it has established an estimated 150,000 media partnerships with Russia’s leading players, including Rambler, Mail.ru, VKontakte, Yandex, Afisha and others. According to TNS, in January 2012 Begun’s advertising network attracted 27.7 million users aged between 12 and 54 residing in large Russian cities.
The Rambler-Afisha group was formed in 2010 by merging the Internet assets of its main shareholder, the ProfMedia group owned by the Russian tycoon Vladimir Potanin, in a bid to establish what Afisha-Rambler CEO Nikolai Moliboga said would be “a unique leadership position in Internet industry.”
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