Internet companies are rapidly escalating their spending on television advertising, a market overview found.
If in 2008 Internet companies accounted for 0.1 percent of all spending on television advertising, last year they reached 1 percent.
In total, e-companies spent about two billion rubles ($55 million) on television advertising in 2013 and a total of six billion in the past six years, the analysis by Kvendi Rusmediaaudit found, Vedomosti reported.
The leader was free advertising site Avito, which spent 255 million rubles ($7 million), followed by car sales site Am.ru, which forked out 241 million rubles.
Russia's largest Internet companies — Yandex, Google and Mail.ru — rounded out the top five.
Among them, Google is augmenting its spending on television advertising the fastest. Having spent a total of 221 million rubles in 2013, the company has already spent 254 million rubles in the first quarter this year, the analysis found.
"We see a significant growth in Internet company's presence on television, and if you look at the period from 2011, it is not even growth, but the appearance of a new category on the television advertising market," said Galina Anikina, the director for planning at media company UM.
