Vladislav Ulendeev: “We are creating a separate holding, in which there will be two owners: eHouse and Rambler”

In an interview with Habrahabru, Vladislav Ulendeev, executive director of the eHouse holding, reveals some details of the deal with Rambler Media about the sale of a 51% stake in the Damochka.Ru social network and BannerBank banner exchange system.

Who was the initiator of the transaction?
After the press release of Rambler Media, I read the opinions of market participants. In particular, about the fact that we made offers to buy "Ladies" and "BannerBank" to all major market participants. It is not true. We have not addressed such a proposal to anyone. All potential buyers of these projects came to us themselves.
Yes, we negotiated with several companies about the sale of these projects. Mostly with investors, but not market players.
What is the transaction amount? According to market participants, it can be up to $ 1 million.
Market participants are wrong at times.

Are you getting rid of non-core assets?
We do not get rid of assets. We are engaged in their development. Perhaps you just misunderstood the meaning of the deal.
We sold half of the company. We are creating a separate holding in which there will be two owners: eHouse and Rambler.
Each shareholder will contribute their capabilities and knowledge to the new company.
Do you think this is a “deliverance” from projects?
Now I don’t think if it’s about a joint holding ... But since you’ve said about it, please explain what kind of holding it will be, what other companies will be included in it, and who will manage it?
At the first stage, the holding will include the “Lady” and “BannerBank” projects. But in the near future we are planning to join new companies to the holding.
Unfortunately, I cannot yet disclose our plans, but I can say that the holding will be managed by a team of managers, which will be created jointly.
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You rely on the traffic of the networks of the BannerBank family, but now, apparently, you have decided to change the situation, and Rambler will be your donor, or, say, a projectile carrier?
This is not true. We do not bet. We use the traffic that we get almost for free. It is very effective.

But now you have to share almost free traffic with Rambler? How will you compensate for the loss?
When we bought BannerBank in 2001, all the networks built on this technology showed 2 million hits a day. Our commission for using the BannerBank technology was 10% or 200 thousand hits per day. Then we did not have enough. Now BannerBank technology is used by more than 1,200 networks, which combine more than 90,000 sites. These networks today show 150-170 million banners per day, the daily eHouse commission is 17-20 million banners!
According to our estimates, BanerBank covers more than 40% of the runet. The number of banner impressions in the system is growing every day. This amount is more than enough to advertise all of our projects. And so we decided to use the "surplus" impressions for sale.

Now we started to just sell free commission. But in the near future, together with Rambler, a contextual advertising system based on BannerBank will be built. Clients will be able to display banners in the BannerBank networks only on those pages that they are interested in.

That is, in the future, it will be possible to create virtual private contextual networks based on BannerBank?
Yes. Plus, the users of BannerBank will be able to use the unified contextual display system in all Bannerbank networks.

When are you planning to release the technology to the market?
Soon. It is not as difficult as it seems at first glance. We have the main engines and technologies, and they work.

Have you read the comments of market participants in the press about the deal with Rambler?

I read some comments of "experts" about our deal with Rambler. Dual feelings. On the one hand, it is pleasant that the managers of competitors are not well aware of what is happening. On the other hand, sorry for the market. And for publications that focus on such "experts."

He was especially surprised by the comment of the manager from “Adriver” . He has not heard anything about BannerBank for a very long time. Adriver uses RLE networks. Probably, they are our main competitor in the banner network market. But RLE shows banners 3 times less than we! The replica of this manager reminded me of the words from the fable: “I didn’t notice the elephant”. More than 500 system administrators use BannerBank to build banner exchange networks. They build their business on it.

I would like to say a few words about Mamba . It's nice that the managers of Finam have an overestimation of their project and place in the market. But at the same time, it is the absolute lack of understanding of which market they are talking about. We are not a competitor of "Mamba". We are building a community. We are a social network site, and Mamba is a dating service site.
We do not pimping. And profiles of prostitutes are removed from the site. On the "Mamba" every tenth questionnaire offers sex services. Yes, we understand that the priestesses of the oldest profession need to be advertised somewhere, but this is not our business.

By virtue of its principles of building a business, “Mamba” cannot do services that we develop. For example, on the "Lady" more than 250 thousand diaries. The most popular have more than 2 thousand readers. And here our competitor is not “Mamba”, but Livejournal .

We are building a community. Every week, "ladies" meet in Moscow in the "live" and arrange big parties for 400-500 people. We shoot big clubs and people communicate, hang out until the morning. In the summer we hold open-air in the amusement parks. In St. Petersburg parties are held every 2 weeks. The parties are held in London, Tallinn, New York, Baku. Once a year we organize large gatherings - “Megadams”, which are attended by “ladies” from different cities, more than 3 thousand people. The "ladies" have their own football teams - Dame Moscow and Dame Peter, who play in the leagues of Moscow and St. Petersburg. “Lady” has its own KVN team.

Once again: we are building a community. We are not a dumb dating site. We do not advertise prostitutes and transvestites. We do not build a business on the principle of "money does not smell."
Yes, there are many times more visitors on all the Mamba sites than on the "Lady". But this is a different business. And we do not pretend to take any share in this business. Therefore, the assessment of the manager of "Mamba" about our share in this market is not true. We are in different markets.
In the past, you regularly published financial results for the year, but for the past two years you have not published anything. Why?
It seems to us useless. Our competitors publish inflated reports by adding numbers from other businesses. Companies like NAUET conduct research in which they also publish unrealistic estimates, often based on telephone surveys.

It's funny, but in one of the ratings on e-commerce NAUET we saw a familiar company with a fairly large turnover. At the time of the ranking, we were negotiating with this company to create a joint online store, and it was known for certain that at the time of the negotiations they were not selling anything via the Internet. Why compete with the numbers sucked from the finger?

According to our estimates, we are still the biggest sellers on the Internet. We are ahead of our closest competitors at times. We will begin to publish reports when we become a public company.

When do you plan to become a public company? Will you conduct an IPO alone, or go public with another major player?
I do not want to call specific dates. We plan to leave with a group of investment companies. There are few big players in our market and, as a rule, their Internet businesses are burdened by offline structures. We do not want to interfere with online commerce with other businesses, so, most likely, there will be no big partners. We plan in the near future a number of purchases, but not major, but niche players.

What epithet can be chosen, looking at your friendship with the "Rambler" now? Can we say that the company has become your strategic partner?
We are partners.

Is this a long-term partnership?
Of course.