Alexander Zharov: media technology must be our own
Gazprom-Media's Alexander Zharov calls media technology a sovereignty issue as RUTUBE hits 20m daily viewers and targets 7bn rubles in ads.
Artificial intelligence and recommendation systems shape what people think and set the agenda for entire countries, so Russia's media technology must be Russian. That is how Alexander Zharov, chief executive of Gazprom-Media Holding, set out the company's position at a plenary discussion on creative-economy technology and the role of large industrial companies, part of the "Creative Code. Technologies" track at Russia's Creative Economy Days. "If we don't do it, others will do it for us. High technologies — artificial intelligence, recommendation systems — are dual-use, because they shape people's opinions and the agenda of whole countries, so this must definitely be ours," Zharov said.
The holding points to RUTUBE as proof that the strategy works. When Gazprom-Media took full ownership of the video platform, its daily audience was 60,000 people and its monthly audience 600,000. RUTUBE now has more than 20 million daily and more than 82 million monthly viewers. Users watched almost 19 billion videos in 2024, more than 52 billion in 2025 and 29 billion in the first half of 2026; the holding expects more than 60 billion views for the full year.
Over four years, Zharov said, Gazprom helped build the infrastructure layer: servers were purchased and caching nodes built so that users from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad get instant responses. RUTUBE, RUTUBE Shorts and PREMIER run on the holding's own technology — artificial intelligence, recommendation and search systems. The work started from open Chinese and American models, which have since been reworked many times. RUTUBE TECH employs 650 people, some of whom teach machine learning and AI at ITMO University and the Higher School of Economics. By the end of the year the holding plans to launch its own advertising platform and a user-data management platform. "Our technological independence makes us unique, and that means we can take part in global competition," Zharov said.
The holding is strict about money. Costs must match revenue, all content goes through a content office and committees, and projects without a margin are not approved. "What we have is not creative activity, it is a creative economy — and a very tough one," Zharov said. In-house shows and series, from the reality formats "Survive in Dubai" and "Survive in Uzbekistan" to "Treasures of the Emperor", premiere on the TNT and NTV channels, then move to RUTUBE and PREMIER and are sold to partners, with the revenue reinvested in production. RUTUBE's advertising revenue was 2 billion rubles in 2025. The holding is targeting 7 billion in 2026 and forecasts a twofold increase in 2027.
Zharov named marketing costs as the main constraint on competing abroad. The largest marketing budget for a Russian film or series does not exceed 250–300 million rubles, he said, while in China, India and especially Hollywood budgets run to tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. The holding relies on Gazprom, which takes a direct part in the creative industries and, together with the Ministry of Economic Development, has commissioned a study of large companies' role in the creative economy. "Creative energy needs at least electricity to turn into a product, and we will always have that," Zharov joked.
For the market, RUTUBE's numbers mean Russian online video now has a platform with the audience of a national TV channel that is starting to earn serious advertising money. Launching its own ad and data platforms would make the holding a more independent player in the advertising market. The next benchmark is the 2026 result: whether the platform can grow its advertising revenue three-and-a-half-fold in a single year.
Sources
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Kurs Media editorial team. Corrections and statements from the parties: press@kursmedia.com. Read in Russian.
