Yandex are negotiating a partnership and Facebook , a person close to the search engine told Vedomosti. According to him, we are talking, firstly, about different options for joint promotion of Yandex services for the Russian Facebook audience, and secondly, about advertising - about the exchange of data from users of both companies.

Such negotiations are ongoing, as a person close to Facebook partners knows, the discussion is at a very early stage.

A Facebook representative did not respond to Vedomosti's request. A Yandex representative said that the search engine is always open to negotiations with different companies.

Facebook is interested in services that are popular in Russia - calling a taxi, buying goods, movie tickets, air tickets, booking hotels, says one of Vedomosti’s interlocutors. Yandex could become the operator of these services for Facebook; it already has Yandex.Taxi, Yandex.Market, Yandex.Afisha, etc. Users of the social network could pay for Yandex services or make purchases through “ Yandex.Market" directly on Facebook, and the companies would share the proceeds from these transactions. True, for this to work, both companies will have to establish end-to-end authorization - combine the Facebook account with Yandex.Passport. A person close to the search engine says that the companies are discussing various exclusive conditions for Facebook users - free access to Yandex.Music and discounts on trips to Yandex.Taxi.

One of Vedomosti’s interlocutors says that companies are discussing combining advertising targeting, or user data, to sell advertising.

In addition, Yandex and Facebook are talking about hyperlocal targeting - a system that will show Facebook users discounts in nearby stores or cafes. Yandex is already showing discounts to Facebook and Instagram users in the experimental Yandex.Moment service. If Yandex manages to reach an agreement with Facebook, a person close to the search engine promises, it will take on the role of a single agency that will work with hundreds of thousands of small offline advertisers. If the advertising inventory of Facebook and Yandex is combined, this could lead to an increase in the reach of both advertising networks, he rejoices.

Access to a mobile audience is a painful issue for Yandex: the company does not have its own mobile platform and has complaints about how its services are distributed through the platform of its competitor, Google Android. The share of Android in Russia, according to Yandex, exceeds 86%.

Facebook is successfully developing in the mobile environment: its application is among the top 3 most popular in the world, says Mary Meeker, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The second most popular is the WhatsApp messenger, owned by Facebook; the third is the Chrome browser from Google. Smartphone and tablet users spend 80% of their time in these three applications.

In the first quarter of 2016, mobile advertising generated almost 80% of Facebook's advertising revenue. Mobile traffic brought Yandex 21% of revenue from contextual ads in 2015. Facebook does not disclose revenues in Russia. Managing Director of Dentsu Aegis Network Maxim Osipov estimated them at hundreds of millions of rubles per year. Yandex received 58.2 billion rubles in 2015. advertising revenue.

The total Facebook audience in Russia is 1.6 times smaller than that of Yandex: 12.6 million versus 20.4 million people (TNS data for April; residents 12–64 years old in cities with a population of more than 700,000 people). In Moscow and St. Petersburg, the Facebook audience noticeably overlaps with the Yandex audience: in general, 98% of social network users visit Yandex at least once a month, but among only mobile users, 35% of Facebook visitors do not regularly use the Russian search engine. Exclusively mobile users of the social network are 2.9 million people, or 40% of the audience in these two cities.

The head of a large advertising group is delighted: “If Yandex really achieves the integration of data with Facebook, Runet advertisers will receive a lot of data about users - not only the history of search queries, but also information about marital status, travel, hobbies, etc.” Yandex, he hopes, thanks to Facebook will receive good mobile traffic, which it so lacks.

National Marketing Director of Russian McDonald's Yulia Koneva is confident that cooperation between Yandex and Facebook is the right idea: “Social network data makes it possible to place very targeted advertising based on almost guaranteed user characteristics.”

Yandex may become a partner of the social network Facebook