Yandex is one of the largest internet companies in Europe, operating Russia’s
most popular search engine and its most visited website. Yandex’s goal
is to help consumers and businesses better navigate the online and offline worlds.
Since 1997, Yandex has delivered world-class, geographically relevant search
and locally tailored experiences on all digital platforms, based on innovative
technologies. Additionally, we have developed market-leading on-demand transportation
services, navigation products, and other mobile applications for millions of
consumers across the globe.
Yandex is a technology company that builds intelligent products and services
powered by machine learning. Our products and services are based on complex,
unique technologies that are not easily replicated. Benefiting from Russia’s
long-standing educational focus on mathematics and engineering, we have drawn
upon the considerable local talent pool to create a leading technology company.
We derive substantially all of our revenues from online advertising. We enable
advertisers to deliver targeted, cost-effective ads that are relevant to our
users’ needs, interests and locations. We serve ads on our own search
results and other Yandex webpages, as well as on thousands of third-party websites
that make up our Yandex ad network. Through our ad network, we extend the audience
reach of our advertisers and generate revenue for both our network partners
and us. We offer a variety of ad formats to our advertisers, including performance-based,
brand and video advertising formats across different platforms. Other revenue
streams come from our e-commerce offerings, ride-sharing service, classifieds,
and other initiatives, including music subscription and event tickets sales
within our Media Services.
Our businesses are organized in the following operating segments:
Search and Portal, which includes all our services offered in Russia, Belarus
and Kazakhstan, other than those described below;
E-commerce (including the Yandex.Market service, which we expect to form a
joint venture with Sberbank in 2018, when the deal is closed);
Taxi (including the Yandex.Taxi service, which combined with Uber’s ride-sharing
business in Russia and neighboring countries in February 2018, as well as Yandex.EATs,
our food delivery business, which consists of FoodFox, acquired in December
2017, and Uber.EATs business, which will be contributed as a result of the transaction
with Uber);
Classifieds (including Auto.ru, Yandex.Realty, Yandex.Jobs and Yandex.Travel);
and
Experimental businesses, including:
Media Services (including KinoPoisk, Yandex.Music, Yandex.Afisha and Yandex.TV
Program);
Yandex Data Factory;
Discovery Services (including Yandex Zen and Yandex Launcher); and
Search and Portal in Turkey.
Our experimental businesses aim to create new business models. Once an experimental
business becomes sizable enough, justifies a new business model, and has good
prospects for future development, we may decide to break it out from our Experiments
and create a separate segment. Unsuccessful experiments may be shut down or
reabsorbed by one of our other segments.
We offer a broad range of world-class, locally relevant search and information
services that are free to our users and that enable them to find relevant information
quickly and easily.
Yandex Search
Our search engine offers almost instantaneous access to the vast range of information
available online. We utilize linguistics, mathematics, machine learning and
AI to develop proprietary algorithms that efficiently extract, compile, systematize
and present relevant information to users. Our organic search results are ranked
by computer algorithms based exclusively on relevance, and we clearly segregate
organic results from paid results to avoid confusing our users.
Yandex.Maps. Our Yandex.Maps provide high-quality, detailed maps of Russia
and neighboring countries. We also provide a detailed map of Turkey and a map
of the whole world. We offer our users panoramic views, public transportation
routes, driving directions with voice controls and turn-by-turn navigation.
We use our technology and licenses to create and edit maps from raw data, including
satellite images, GPS coordinates and live user feedback. Yandex.Maps is also
available via application programming interfaces, or APIs, which allow developers
to embed and use our interactive maps in third-party websites and applications,
as well as to add extra layers of information—for example, to offer a
map showing the location of a restaurant or a hotel.
We also offer Yandex.Navigator, our mobile application that provides turn-by-turn
navigation, incorporates a voice input function, speed limit warnings, parking
information, natural guidance features as reference points along a route, voice
notifications for accidents, road works etc. It is one of Yandex’s most
popular mobile apps in terms of usage.
Navigator is also one of the essential components of Yandex.Auto, our voice-activated
in-car infotainment system, which offers Yandex’s best-in-class mapping
and navigation, our music streaming, weather information and other services.
We work with car manufacturers on equipping cars with Yandex.Auto. Yandex.Auto
is already available in some models of Toyota and Honda on the Russian market.
The Yandex.Transport app provides users with real-time data on public transport
in a number of Russian cities. It also operates in Helsinki and Tampere, Finland;
Budapest, Hungary; Sydney and Brisbane, Australia; and Auckland, New Zealand.
Yandex Business Directory provides users with a comprehensive list of businesses,
detailed information about them, as well as search option for services and goods.
Personal Services
Yandex.Mail. Yandex.Mail provides users with fast and easy access to their
email.
Yandex.Disk is our cloud-based storage service that allows users to upload,
store and share content online. Since late 2017 we have been providing unlimited
storage space for the content uploaded through Yandex.Disk mobile app.
Yandex.News is the most visited online news aggregation service in Russia,
providing a comprehensive media overview for our users. We aggregate and present
local, national and international news. The selection of news is fully automated
and editorial-free.
Yandex.Weather
Our Yandex.Weather service offers hyperlocal, real-time weather information
based on our proprietary weather forecasting technology, Meteum. Powered by
machine learning, it gives accurate forecasts for areas as local as individual
neighborhoods across the world.
Yandex Browser
Our Yandex Browser is the second most popular browser on desktops and the most
popular non-native browser on mobile platforms in Russia. Yandex Browser is
committed to delivering high-quality user experiences and protecting web audiences.
Yandex.Browser’s built-in Antishock technology blocks malicious and fraudulent
advertising and its “Protect” technology offers comprehensive protection
against the majority of online threats. For example, Yandex.Browser checks all
downloaded files for viruses, warning users about dangerous websites, encrypting
users’ passwords when using public Wi-Fi networks, and ensuring safe payments.
Recently, we have introduced native ad blocking in the Russian version of Yandex
Browser to enhance users’ browsing experience by filtering intrusive advertising.
The combined share of desktop and mobile searches processed through Yandex
Browser in Russia reached 19.6% in February 2018, according to Yandex.Radar.
Yandex Search App
In 2017 we significantly upgraded our Yandex Search App by integrating Yandex’s
must-have services into one app, including Search, Maps, News, Zen, Weather
and many others. In October 2017 we enhanced our Search App with Alice, the
first conversational voice assistant on the Russian market. In 2017 our Search
App was the fastest growing search app on the Russian market. In December 2017
it became the third most downloaded app in Google Play in Russia.
Turbo pages
We launched Turbo pages in mid-2017. Turbo pages is a new format of displaying
content on mobile devices, which loads several times faster than regular web
pages and are optimized for smaller screens. Our Turbo pages are easier to implement
compared to other similar products globally and offer monetization from Yandex
out of the box. Turbo pages are available on Search, Zen and News.
Alice
In October 2017, we launched Alice, the first conversational intelligent assistant
for the Russian market. Alice assists users with a wide array of information
needs, such as factoid questions, weather forecasts, directions and currency
exchange rates. Alice is not limited to predefined scenarios and includes a
general chit-chat mode – a unique feature among intelligent assistants
that has been enthusiastically embraced by millions of users. It also benefits
from the near-human level of speech recognition accuracy (based on the Word
Error Rate measurement) provided by the Yandex SpeechKit platform. As of today,
Alice integrates many Yandex services such as Search, News, Weather, Music,
Maps, and Taxi, and also includes over a dozen games. The external skills platform
for Alice is currently in beta, and includes such skills as ordering from Papa
John’s Pizza. Alice is available in Russian in the Yandex Search app and
Yandex.Browser on iOS and Android, as well as with Yandex Browser on Windows.
Our Monetization and Advertiser Services
We offer a variety of ad formats to our advertisers, including performance-based,
brand and video advertising formats.
Performance-based ads are principally targeted to a particular user query on
our search engine result pages, and on search result pages of our partners,
as well as to the content of a particular website or webpage being viewed, or
to user behavior or characteristics. Such ads are clearly marked as paid advertising
and are separate from our organic search results and non-advertising content.
Most of our revenues are generated from performance-based advertising, on a
pay-per-click basis, with a smaller portion generated from brand advertising
and video advertising, based on the number of impressions delivered. We actively
monitor the ads we serve, both automatically and manually, in order to help
ensure the relevance of the ads as well as compliance with applicable laws.
Yandex.Direct
Yandex.Direct is our auction-based advertising placement platform, which uses
auction theory and relies on our distributed infrastructure to process millions
of auctions every day. Yandex.Direct lets advertisers cost-effectively deliver
relevant ads targeted at particular search queries or content on Yandex websites
or third-party websites in the Yandex Advertising Network. Advertisers may use
our automated tools, often with little or no assistance from us, to create performance-based
ads, bid on keywords that are likely to trigger the display of their ads, and
set total spending budgets. Yandex.Direct features an automated, online sign-up
process that enables advertisers to create and quickly launch their advertising
campaigns. Advertisers may also work with our sales staff to design and implement
more specialized or sophisticated advertising campaigns. Recently we enhanced
Yandex.Direct with an opportunity to place display ads right in the system.
We also offer a Yandex.Direct mobile app to better facilitate advertisers’
access to our service to manage their advertising campaigns.
Performance-based ads on our desktop search engine results page (SERP) appear
in one of several general categories: top placement, appearing above the organic
search results and featuring up to four paid links on desktop and up to three
paid links on mobile; and a southern block, which appears either below the organic
search results or the right-hand block located to the right of the organic search
results, featuring up to nine paid links in total on desktop and up to one paid
link on mobile. In late 2017 we started to test the concept of Templates –
our new ad placement formats tailored to a search query of a particular user.
Templates allow users to dynamically enrich an advertisement with additional
elements, such as quick links, contact information, working hours, merchants’
ratings, images and others. Subsequently we announced the change in our search
engine results page layout. Instead of our typical ad placement blocks, paid
links will be mixed with organic search links, while our algorithms will choose
which format is more appropriate and efficient in each particular situation
in order to provide a more personalized SERP. The advertisers will bid for the
amount of traffic they want to purchase, instead of traditional bidding for
a specific ad placement block. As previously, Yandex.Direct will continue to
use a Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) auction to serve ads on our SERP.