Who advertises in online video.
I wanted to see what is actually happening with video advertising on several platforms, so I wrote code that spent four months watching videos on Rutube, VK Video and in the pirate app Zona and logging every ad. Here is what it shows: how much advertising, which formats, who advertises and where the ads lead.
Why I did this
Video advertising on Russian platforms is much discussed, but open data is scarce: the platforms keep their own statistics and panel studies are expensive. I wanted to see what an ordinary viewer actually gets, so I wrote code that automatically watches videos on Rutube, VK Video and in the pirate Android app Zona and logs every ad: the creative, its duration, the skip button, the legal disclaimer, the erid and the landing page. I will update the data and the dashboard from time to time.
This is an observation of openly broadcast advertising, through a limited number of automated viewing sessions in Moscow. There is no reach or budget here, but formats, advertisers and ad labelling are visible. Period: 3 June 2026 — 5 October 2026.
Key numbers
In four months, 6,209 unique ad creatives from 428 legal entities were recorded.
How much advertising each platform serves
Rutube served ads in 48% of sessions, mostly pre-rolls: a session is one opened video, and mostly its beginning is watched. In almost every fourth ad session (23%) two ads ran back to back. VK Video: 29% of sessions, one ad each. Zona: 24% of sessions, with two ads in a row in 25% of ad sessions.
Formats: 15–20 seconds, no skip button
Length. Rutube has two standards: 15 seconds (22% of impressions) and 20 seconds (20%), averaging 18.1 seconds. VK Video mixes six-second bumpers (23% of impressions) with long creatives, averaging 25.9 seconds. On Zona the average is 15.0 seconds.
Skipping is the main difference. On Rutube the viewer saw a skip button in only 5% of impressions; on VK Video 83% were skippable, on Zona 79%. Rutube sells completed views, while VK Video is closer to a model where viewers decide for themselves.
Disclaimer. The legal ad disclaimer was visible in 82% of Rutube impressions and 92% on VK Video. On Zona none was detected at all.
What the erid actually contains
A note for anyone building analytics on ad labelling. On Rutube the erid field in the player was filled in 74% of impressions, but in 90% of cases it held the platform's technical token with a constant prefix; only 4% of values looked like a registry identifier. The same creative arrives with different values on different days, so here “the same creative” is defined by a video fingerprint, not by erid. This is an observation about technical player data, not an assessment of how the platform or advertisers meet labelling requirements.
On VK Video the erid looks like a registry identifier and appears in 92% of impressions, but the legal entity is often hidden behind an “About the advertiser” click. As a result the advertiser is known for 87% of Rutube impressions (tax ID for 61%) and only 15% on VK Video.
Which industries advertise
The advertiser's industry is assigned by an automated classifier using the entity name, landing domain and disclaimer text; large advertisers were checked by hand. On Rutube and VK Video the shares of impressions were: Classifieds (Cian, Avito, Auto.ru): 17.8%; Banks & finance: 15.1%; Beauty & household: 10.5%; Marketplaces & e-commerce: 8.6%; Media & streaming: 7.5%; Food: 7.4%. Bookmakers are almost entirely on Zona: 95% of their impressions.
Who buys
Most creatives over the period came from: Cian (118), NTS Gradient (100), Auto.ru / Yandex Realty / Yandex Travel (90), PREMIER (80), Wildberries (78), T-Bank (71), National Projects (62), VTB (54), Alfa-Bank (49), PIK (48). The number in brackets is unique videos.
Concentration. The ten largest legal entities took 53% of impressions with a known advertiser, the top 20 67%, the top 50 81%. Yet the median advertiser ran only two creatives: a few anchors and a long tail.
The tail never ends. New legal entities appear every full month: 145, 140, 132. About 139 a month on average.
Platforms barely overlap. Only 58 of 428 advertisers appeared on two or more platforms, and 12 on all three. For most brands, video advertising means one platform.
Creatives live for a day
78% of creatives were seen on a single day only; 13% lasted a week or longer, 3.8% a month or longer. 69% were seen exactly once, while the 0.5% most frequent collected 38% of all impressions. Campaigns run many short waves and many versions of the same video.
Where the click goes
For 53% of creatives the click goes straight to the advertiser's site. The rest pass through ad systems: adhigh.net (Getintent): 17%, yandex.ru (Yandex Direct / yabs): 12%, ads.gpm-ssp.ru (Gazprom-Media SSP): 7%, targetads.io: 5%. The most common landing pages: ozon.ru (115), tbank.ru (92), cian.ru (58), wildberries.ru (43), hero-wars.com (38), avtoradiodisco.ru (35). Manufacturers often buy video but send traffic to a marketplace storefront.
Disclaimers show this too: 402 creatives name two entities, the “advertiser” and the “seller”. The most frequent seller is ООО «Интернет Решения» (Ozon), with 115 creatives from 19 different advertisers.
Zona: no labelling detected
In the pirate app Zona no legal disclaimer was detected in any impression, and erid was found in 0.3% of impressions. One 30-second bookmaker creative (“Bookmaker 1”; I do not name bookmakers) took 64% of all Zona advertising. Text on frames also revealed legitimate brands there: Pyaterochka, Mir Tankov, Zarina / befree / Sela, Sovcombank, VseInstrumenti and METRO. How their ads ended up there cannot be told from this data.
What marketers can take from this
- Plan the format for the platform. Rutube: a non-skippable 15–20-second spot; VK Video: a short bumper plus a long version for those who don't skip.
- Don't build campaign analytics on the player's erid alone. A fingerprint of the video itself is more reliable.
- Watch competitors more often than monthly. Creatives live for days and new advertisers keep arriving.
- Check where your programmatic runs. Legitimate brands also show up in pirate apps.
- A marketplace as the landing page is now normal. If you are a manufacturer, competitors probably send video traffic to Ozon and retail chains.
Method and limitations
- Viewing sessions. Automated profiles in Moscow open videos on a schedule like an ordinary viewer and log the ads the platform shows to everyone. A session is one opened video.
- Impression: one ad with time, duration, position, skip button, disclaimer, erid and click URL.
- Creative: a unique video by video fingerprint, not by erid, URL or screenshot.
- Advertiser: the legal entity from the disclaimer, enriched with the open Federal Tax Service registry. No disclaimers were detected on Zona, so there the advertiser is read from text on frames, with lower accuracy.
- Industries: an automated classifier, spot-checked by hand.
- Shares and loads use the period with a constant collection pace (13 July 2026 — 4 October 2026).
- Not included: reach, frequency and budgets of the real audience. This is observation, not market measurement.
Disclaimer
This is an independent study based on open data: advertising that platforms publicly broadcast to any viewer, and information from open registries. The data was collected automatically on a limited sample of views and may be incomplete, inaccurate or erroneous, including in identifying the advertiser, brand, industry and landing page. These are not official platform statistics, and reach and budgets are not estimated here. If an impression shows no erid or legal disclaimer, that does not mean there was none: the system may simply have failed to detect or recognise it.
This material is for information and analysis only. It is not advertising, an offer or a legal assessment, and it makes no claim that any company or platform mentioned has broken the law. Legal entity names are given as shown in the ad disclaimers; trademarks belong to their owners. Bookmakers are not named. If you find an error or represent a company mentioned here, get in touch and I will check and correct it.
To cite: Ivan Barchenkov, “Who advertises in online video” dashboard, barchenkov.tech, data 3 June 2026 — 5 October 2026.