Yandex, the company that runs Russia’s most-popular search engine, has bought the country’s most-visited movie- and television-information website in a deal that expands its reach in Europe’s most populous Internet market

October 16, 2013 Leave a comment

Yandex Buys Russia’s Answer to IMDb

Deal Expands Company’s Reach in Europe’s Most Populous Internet Market

OLGA RAZUMOVSKAYA

Updated Oct. 15, 2013 5:37 p.m. ET

MOSCOW— Yandex YNDX +0.60% NV, the company that runs Russia’s most-popular search engine, has bought the country’s most-visited movie- and television-information website in a deal that expands its reach in Europe’s most populous Internet market. Announcing the deal Tuesday, Yandex gave no financial details of the deal to buy KinoPoisk, or MovieSearch. Analysts and industry insiders said it could be valued at as much as $95 million.KinoPoisk, Russia’s most comprehensive website dedicated to movies, TV programs and celebrities, is the closest thing Russia has to Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -1.38% ‘s Internet Movie Data Base, or IMDb, which boasts 160 million monthly visitors.

KinoPoisk has a monthly audience of 18.6 million users, according to comScore Media Metrix, making it the 14th-most-visited site in Russia. It contains more than 100 million movie ratings, with about three million new ones added every month. Most of its revenue, which the company doesn’t disclose, comes from advertising.

Dmitriy Stepanov, head of media services at Yandex, said the company wants to significantly increase revenue by developing a comprehensive movie-recommendation system tailored to specific users’ interests and preferences.

The company is planning to do this by turning KinoPoisk into a further platform that can be used for advertising. Yandex’s technology will help guide advertisers by targeting the audience of KinoPoisk with better precision and offer suggestions based on user preferences. Yandex will also be integrating KinoPoisk into its search results, the company said.

The purchase is the latest step by Yandex to broaden out from its search engine, taking advantage of its existing technology and know-how that will allow for the processing of large quantities of data. In summer 2012, Yandex acquired a 25% stake in Seismotech LLC, a company that processes geophysical seismic data used by oil and natural-gas companies in exploration. Yandex, which paid $1 million for the stake, provided Seismotech with technology that allows the data to be processed much faster.

Asked whether Yandex is talking to other companies about turning KinoPoisk into a video-streaming website, Mr. Stepanov said that there are no such plans at the moment. He did say, however, that Yandex is in talks with several Russian online video-streaming services, including ivi.ru, about possible cooperation but declined to elaborate.

The company isn’t currently aiming to become the Russian equivalent of Hulu LLC orNetflix Inc., NFLX -0.82% popular on-demand video-streaming media currently unavailable in Russia, he said. It is, however, open to the possibility of working with those companies, Mr. Stepanov added.

Yandex has in recent weeks announced a number of moves to boost its presence on Russia’s booming online market. Last week, it said it would create an online marketplace via the Yandex.Market platform and increase the ways customers can pay using the company’s Yandex.Money service, co-owned with state-controlled lender OAO Sberbank.SBER.RS +2.34%

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