The reality show "Public Games" was broadcast around the clock on the VKontakte network for a month and a half - from October 9 to November 25, during which time more than 33 million unique users connected to the broadcasts, who collected 219 million views and left 2 million comments, the social network reported net.

The production of the show, commissioned by “VKontakte” and several social network communities (MDK, “Ward number 6”, “Evil Corporation” and BORSCH), was carried out by the companies Divico and Mastiff. The latter has previously made reality shows for traditional channels, such as “Vacations in Mexico” and “Russian Next Top Model.” Representatives of VKontakte refused to disclose the project budget, but clarified that most of the expenses were covered by the sponsors. An employee of a large television company believes that such a project should have cost more than 50 million rubles.

VKontakte is the largest social network in Russia, it is part of the Mail.ru Group holding. In 2016, the social network's revenue grew by 43.4% to 8.9 billion rubles, this is the fastest growing business of the Mail.ru Group.

“VKontakte” intends to actively promote the creation of various video content for this social network, explains Dmitry Sergeev, Deputy General Director of Mail.ru Group. “Before, such large-scale shows were only available to television channels,” he points out. “Now we are launching them too.” VKontakte, according to Sergeev, expects that the creation of such projects will increasingly be carried out by communities, which themselves will begin to attract quality manufacturers and sponsors.

Before the “Public Games”, the social network had already done such projects with communities as the cooking show “Street Flood”, the educational show “Sobolev Bombs”, and carried out sports broadcasts, the largest of which was the showing of the Spanish Football Championship together with the Telesport company. Soon “VKontakte” will show the continuation of the sketch show program “Giving Youth” together with the company Yellow, Black & White.

Smoke on the water
In the “Public Games,” specially selected participants underwent various tests, and the participants were voted on by the audience. In the final, the two winners stood on poles above the water for more than 14 hours, they won 3 million rubles each....
Read in full

Smoke on the water

In the “Public Games,” specially selected participants underwent various tests, and the participants were voted on by the audience. In the final, the two winners stood on poles above the water for more than 14 hours and won 3 million rubles each.

High-quality video content is one of the ways to attract the attention of users and increase the time they spend on the social network. Now, according to MediaScope, VKontakte users spend about half an hour a day on this social network. This is roughly the same as what US users spend on Facebook and YouTube (35 and 40 minutes, respectively).

In addition to attracting the attention of users, large-scale shows are designed to attract the attention of original content producers and advertisers to VKontakte, adds Alexander Kruglov, marketing director of the social network. Now producers prefer to use YouTube for online distribution, although the VKontakte audience in Russia is larger, he points out. This is happening, in particular, because now producers have more opportunities to monetize their content inside YouTube - primarily through special projects with sponsors and native advertising (i.e. advertising that is as similar as possible to the original content of the channel), Kruglov admits.

He believes that YouTube has no obvious advantages here and the behavior of advertisers and, accordingly, content producers is more a matter of habit that needs to be changed.

Now VKontakte invests more in creating video projects than it earns from it, says Kruglov, but expects that in a couple of years this will become a significant income for the social network.

The communities themselves are also interested in launching video shows, Kruglov is sure, there are now many popular communities within the social network that are increasingly similar to each other, so original content for them is a matter of image, a way to differentiate themselves from competitors. He believes that, as in the case of YouTube, communities will make money on video projects within VKontakte primarily thanks to sponsors and special projects, rather than direct advertising, i.e., commercials that are shown to users before the video is launched (the so-called preroll).

General Producer of Yellow, Black & White Eduard Iloyan agrees that producers now prefer to make projects for YouTube and do it more out of habit: “The VKontakte audience is really larger, it is more emotionally involved in projects, and in the future this platform may become a priority in Russia for producers."

A representative from Google (which runs YouTube) did not immediately respond to a request last night.

Smoke on the water In the “Public Games,” specially selected participants underwent various tests, and the participants were voted on by the audience. In the final, the two winners stood on poles above the water for more than 14 hours, they won 3 million rubles each.... Read in full

Smoke on the water
In the “Public Games,” specially selected participants underwent various tests, and the participants were voted on by the audience. In the final, the two winners stood on poles above the water for more than 14 hours, they won 3 million rubles each....
Read in full

VKontakte intends to compete with YouTube