The average daily audience of the Rutube desktop and mobile applications among Russians over 12 years old has grown year-on-year to 4.4 million people in June, it was reported “Vedomosti” citing data from the research company Mediascope. At the same time, YouTube’s audience growth in Russia over the year was 9.4%, to 55.6 million people, while VKontakte’s growth was 5%, to 54.7 million users.
Image source: Rutube
According to Maxim Ryabyko, a member of the board of the Association for the Protection of Copyright on the Internet, and Karen Kazaryan, director of the Institute for Internet Research, the rapid growth of Rutube’s audience was facilitated by the placement of pirated content on the site from film studios and streaming services that left Russia. Netflix series (The Witcher, The Queen’s Gambit, and others), films such as Oppenheimer (distributed by Universal Pictures), Barbie, the second part of Dune (Warner Bros. Pictures), and others that were not officially released in Russia are currently available on the platform, Vedomosti writes.
Alina Emkuzheva from the Patentus patent bureau suggested that since major film studios apparently are not currently sending requests to remove pirated content, Rutube is not obliged to block it.
The expert suggested that Rutube could further increase its audience thanks to the slowdown of YouTube, which was previously reported by the head of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Alexander Khinshtein. However, according to Mediascope, the slowdown of the YouTube video hosting service in Russia did not affect its traffic. Anna Planina, Director of Digital Technologies at NMi Group, noted that YouTube remains popular among Russian users. Planina named VK as the only alternative to YouTube video formats at the moment, describing the Rutube video hosting service as insolvent.
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