Vladivostok, Yandex and 2027.
In August I spent a week in Vladivostok with the Yandex team. It was a closed meeting with partner agencies, and MediaNation was there as a Yandex Premium Partner. Here's what we discussed, as far as it can be shared, and why meetings like this matter above all for our clients.
The meeting was closed, so there are no numbers, names or agreements here. Just the big picture.
What kind of meeting it was
Once a year Yandex brings together the agencies it works with most closely to discuss joint plans for the coming year. This time it was in Vladivostok, for a whole week. The format is intimate: a few dozen people responsible for a large share of the market's ad budgets, and the Yandex teams building the products those budgets run on.
What we talked about
- Joint plans for 2027. Where Yandex is taking its ad products and what that means for agencies and advertisers.
- Where the ad market is heading. Which channels are growing, where money stops working, how business expectations of marketing are changing.
- How other players are doing. An honest conversation about what's happening at agencies and their clients — no slides, no gloss.
- Experience and clients. We swapped practice: which approaches work and which don't, and what problems clients come with.
Why this matters to clients, not to me
From the outside a trip like this can look like a corporate retreat. In reality it's one of the most useful weeks of the year, and the benefit goes to clients.
- Ahead of the market. We learn where ad products are heading not from press releases but from the teams building them. A client's strategy can be built for what will happen in six months, not for what happened yesterday.
- Direct contact. When a client has a non-standard task or something breaks, we know who to go to. It gets solved with a call, not a ticket.
- A market benchmark. We see how other players are doing. That helps us tell a client honestly where the problem is theirs and where it's simply how things are for everyone right now.
What I took home
The main feeling: the market is growing up. The winners aren't the ones who promise the loudest, but those who can count the client's money, work with data and talk honestly about results. That's exactly what we bet on at MediaNation, StreamMyData and SearchBooster.
And yes, it was also a very beautiful week. Vladivostok in August is worth the trip.
