How is the largest automotive community Drive2.ru - traffic, monetization and user content

Drive.ru and Drive2.ru - the largest media about cars and the community where users write about everything related to cars. Both projects use Relap.io recommender technologies. We asked Yuri Belousov, director of project development, how everything is arranged with them.

What they talked about:

- On the history of the project.
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- About attendance and traffic.

- About money and advertising.

- About user content and media 3.0.

- How DRIVE2 helps sell cars.

- On achievements and plans.

How did the "Drive" and DRIVE2

Many, many years ago, a “Drive” appeared in the mid-2000s. The approach was this: this is something incredibly beautiful, content about cars without a huge amount of advertising, as on many resources now. At the start there was no advertising at all. Everything is so clean, neat, single-column layout.

Then we could afford the lack of advertising, because we had our own twister of ads Rorer. At that time, Rorer was almost on par with Yandex.Direct.



There was something that makes money, and “Drive” appeared as a project for which I want to live. “Drive” is the media that the editorial staff does, journalists write, shoot test drives.

At some point appeared DRIVE2. This is what all automotive forums should have become.

The story is simple. We have Anton Bolotov, the owner and founder of all projects. Some time ago, Hyundai Getz. He was in the club, in the forum, everything was cool. Then he sold Hyundai Getz and realized that he seemed to have another car, he wanted to talk with his former friends, and he seemed to want to join the club about a new car.

He got an idea how to combine these two clubs. And where 2 clubs are combined, everything else is combined there. This is how DRIVE2 appeared, where people communicate in the same way according to their interests. Now DRIVE2 is a UGC platform where users write about themselves and their cars, such a community of cars and people, and a huge interesting structure that has grown around it.

There are 30 of us in total. There is an editorial board, there is a commercial department and there are technicians who are engaged in development, plus managers. Less than 10 people deal with news and test drives. There is a team of newsmen, test drivers, proofreader and artistic director. Photographers and operators are on the outsource, and do video production themselves.

About traffic

DRIVE2 has more than 15 million unique users per month. Transitions from search engines are in the region of 40–45% of traffic, direct visits are another 30–35%, and the rest are links on websites and social networks. That is, basically, people go from the search and directly directly to DRIVE2.

Why so much of the search - suppose you have a smart, cool machine. You do not start it, you need to change the battery. You come up in front and realize that it does not open. You go somewhere in "Yandex" or Google and drive in "How to replace the battery with Smart?" So, you get to us. Just because DRIVE2 has UGC content. Millions of users, and everyone writes about his car, where he went, what he did. People write what interests others, with words that understand.

On the news "Drive" more than 1.7 million unique users per month. Direct visits - about 60%, from search engines - around 25%, everything else is also links on sites, social networks.

From the big DRIVE2 to the first news “Drive”, we have only been driving users through Relap in recent months. And there is generally some kind of milipusenka, when we drive from DRIV2 to the cars in DRIVE2. But this is traffic that is almost imperceptible on DRIVE2 radars.

Monetization and advertising

What makes the money "Drive" and DRIVE2:

• This is a display advertising that we sell ourselves.
• These are automatic networks that I set up and experiment.
• These are payments made by users who pay to show their car or pay to promote their record.
• These are small businesses. For businesses on DRIVE2 there are business accounts. There are several thousand of them.
• And non-standard formats like buttons.

What are business accounts ? The user comes to us and writes: "I am engaged in a business, make me a business account." This is a product for people who are engaged in any business that is closely related to cars. Basically, these are services, tuners of completely different formats, from sewing rugs to body kits and engine modifications.

There they create their own business page and write to the company's blog: “We did it,” “We work with this.” They can promote these records and get new customers. They are shown to the user in the feed, he can comment, write a personal message or subscribe. Accordingly, businesses invest money, promote records and get subscribers. And if a person has subscribed to you, then everything that you write is shown to him in the tape for free. Unlike, by the way, from Facebook, where you can have a group of 10 thousand people, and 100 will see your new publication.

About three weeks ago we had a cool product for such business accounts - “pay-per-click advertising”. The thing is wonderful because we provide an average CTR for all campaigns over 12% and offer unique targeting for the automotive business - no one offers this at all. We know exactly which car the user is driving, because he indicates this data during registration.



CPC is such a block in a tape. You clicked on it and went to the advertiser's page. Moreover, it was transferred not only inside DRIVE2 - you can take the user through any link: to your website, to your page in “VKontakte”, wherever you go.

The ad is good because there are a lot of people who are engaged in excellent automotive businesses and cannot or do not want to write about it. And to make an advertisement, you simply add a picture, a link and a title. This is very little text. It is the power of everyone.



For example, a business that is engaged in chip tuning comes to us and writes an advertisement: “Chip tuning for your $ car (the car’s make and model of the user is substituted for $ car) for 10 thousand rubles” and chooses who to show, that is owners, for example, Ford Focus and all Volvo - there are different targeting. And when the user sees the advertisement, we ourselves substitute the name of the car in the title.

Here, for example, I drive a Volvo C30 and see: "Chip tuning for your Volvo C30 for 10 thousand rubles." Accordingly, businesses that add good pictures, headlines, and target the right users can get a CTR of 50%.

For example, I am serviced by our business account. As it turned out, approximately 95% of its service customers are DRIVE2. That is, the person simply built his business on DRIVE2.

We made the decision that if you live on DRIVE2 as a business, then the entire DRIVE2 becomes specifically for business, so that nothing distracts you. When you become a business account, all social life is lost for you. There is no tape, there is no main one, but there is the addition of records and the creation of advertisements.

A business account is all that is needed for work. These are simple charts: how much audience reach you have, how many subscribers. For each promotion of a blog entry, there are statistics for hits, CTR, clicks, likes, that's all. For an ad, there is a cost per click, CTR, impressions and budget spent.



We are experimenting with Google and Yandex advertising. We have a lot of traffic and we are ready to experiment with it. I get all the beta that go into the advertising network "Yandex". A couple of weeks ago, all partners in Russia were told about the new interface of the advertising network, and so I had it in January. And I am the first of the partners who sent Yandex several lists of bugs and nuances that would be good to fix. At DRIVE2, technologies are checked and new products are polished (a little background: in September I came to Drive from Yandex).

What give experiments. Getting started is easy. If you didn’t have any advertising or there was the usual “Yandex.Direct” or Google AdWords, then the most obvious experiment, which, unfortunately, is not all done - try to install RTB. This is an auction, which has not only text advertising, but also a media one.

The second type of experiment is the most interesting. You can give “Yandex” all the traffic, but you can say to him “buy back more and more expensive than X rubles”. And this unfortunate X rubles - the goal of all experiments. You need to find the moment when you get as much money as you want, and give as much traffic to Yandex as you want.

The following experiments on understanding - give all traffic first to Google, and then, if it doesn’t pick it up - to Yandex, or vice versa. In what proportions? What are the minimum bids?

My wish is to give as little traffic to Google and Yandex and earn as much money as possible. Linear addiction, when I gave more traffic and got more money, does not work here. No matter how obvious it may sound.

Non-standard advertising formats - for the guys who deal with banks and insurance, there are buttons. That is, the "Drive" is a fairly large catalog of cars with all sorts of prices and other things. So there is a button "calculate Casco" or "arrange a loan." This is a pay-per-click button, it is also loved.

Own advertising panel, targeting, CPC in the tape - this is such a long-playing story. Conventionally, CPC, pay-per-click advertising, in technical terms, was done by a couple of guys. The first 97% were made in two weeks: the targeting and the mechanism for hitting the tape were already ready and used in the promotion of records, they made the interface and technical stuffing.

Later, we made advanced CPC statistics and an internal auction - we have CPCs in the tape and promotion of entries for one place.

But it’s quite difficult to say that we’ve finished, because the process of improvement is eternal.

About user content and media 3.0

Media go to ensure that users generate the bulk of the content, and the editors filter and direct. We now have UGC and a lot of it. People write about everything: about new laws, about new cars and concept cars. For example, we have a user who writes about cars that are for many years with low mileage. For example, the 1986 Porsche 911 with a mileage of 743 kilometers. And he makes stories from this, makes photos. These are 20 photos and several pages of text. This is tens of thousands of views. We have people who work in automobile factories, in city administrations, in traffic police. DRIVE2 - this is a slice of Russians associated with cars, they all share it.

It turns out the media 3.0, when you have millions of browsers and filtering. Semi-manual filtering, interesting we put on the main page for registered users, plus, with the help of a recommender system, we show recommendations inside posts.

We have added more than 12 thousand publications per day. The average visibility of the Relap widget in the middle of the page is more than 60%. The widget comes at the end of the article before the comments. The beauty is that we can have up to 20 photos and an unlimited amount of text. This appearance of the widget suggests that people really read all the content.

On average, a guest on the site looks more than six pages per session. A registered user is more than 13 pages, a premium is more than 18 pages, that is, people who read. That for Twitter and "VKontakte" does not seem very typical.

About selling cars

We have a car sale. On the page of the machine, if it is on sale, there is a plate with all the contacts and data.

And we have something that no one else has — a logbook, a history of a car. You can tell in three words how I sold my last three cars. I once had a Hyundai Accent. About him the life story was from 40 thousand kilometers to 102 thousand. All THAT, travel, everything, even as I knocked on a pole.

How I sold the car. A man called me and I say, go into any search and enter “Hyundai Accent Cursor” - there you will read the whole story for the last 70 thousand kilometers. For many cars, it's a lifetime. My potential buyer called me after 2 days. He came, saw my car, walked around and said, "I buy." He did not start it, we did not go to the service, but why? The whole history of the car is on DRIVE2.

We devote little time to this area, because first of all we solve other tasks and user needs. And in the sale of cars there are competitors who have an impressive headquarters of people and resources that go for it. And we understand that to reach their level we need to spend a lot of time. We made the sale of cars because we have a huge number of users requested this opportunity.

Nevertheless, at the end of the year we launched the Flea Market. Imagine a bulletin board without any advertisements, with good filters and sections. Also made by people who understand cars.

About achievements and plans

We have business accounts that we will develop. Interfaces will be better, more opportunities, additional services for businesses will appear.