What is SKI.RU?

Russian winter outdoor market grows very fast at the moment, for the last 5 years winter activities market shows stable 20% gain every year. There are from 700.000 to 1 million alpine skiers and snowboarders at Russia now. Just the way it happened in Europe, winter outdoor activities boom in Russia follows economical development of the society, that's why Russian ski & snowboard media grew rapidly over the last few years. And that's why in September 2003 Russian internet portal SKI.RU opened its pages for the Russian skiers and snowboarders.

SKI.RU - is the most popular, informationally completed, highly interactive media with widest in Russia winter activities coverage. Now we are the most visited Russian language internet site, devoted to winter leisure and sport activities. Number of our visitors in 2004-2005 ski season was almost 450 000 with average number of daily visitors nearly 2500.
The main Russian ski resorts are in the Caucuses Mountains, Ural Mountains, and also smaller places around Moscow and St .Petersburg. But Russian ski resorts unfortunately do not have good facilities and high quality of service, so at least 40% of Russian skiers travel every winter to the Alps or Pyrenees for their winter holidays. That is one of the major reasons why SKI.RU became so popular among Russian skiers and snowboarders – we give a great informational coverage to the ski resorts outside of Russia.

Advertising potential - because of our highly motivated and active auditorium, SKI.RU became very effective advertising instrument for any company, resort or just a hotel owner. We provide our customers with massive banner campaigns, PR programs and unique advertising services such as Accommodation Directory and Context Blocks.

SKI.RU portal is far from being a simple internet site, it is a number of contents and interactive features that work together:

• eMagazine - periodical on-line edition, providing the reader with the latest news of the snow-sports industry.
• Library - more than 1 000 articles related to the winter-sports activities & holiday, with search engine and other navigation features.
• Resorts Directory - largest in the Russian Internet catalogue of ski resorts, destinations, villages and slopes, including maps, detailed descriptions, skiers' opinions and vote/rating options.
• Winter Activities Sites Directory - large board, listing related to the snow industry web resources.

• Discussion Board - highly popular service, more than 3 000 registered users.
• Winter Holiday Travel Mate Search
• Evaluation Service - on locations and ski & snowboard equipment - readers' and industry professionals' opinions and ratings.
• Photo Gallery - photo depositary with an open access.
• Context Block System - professionally-designed advertisement presentation system aimed at the most effective promotion of the products and servicesFacts and numbers

Popularity
One of SKI.RU distinctive character is seasonality, as shown below.

Monthly visitors and page views numbers

2003-04 season (October-March)

• Total visitors – 330 983
• Average daily visitors – 1 838
• Number of page views – 1 354 396
• Average daily page views – 7 524
• Number of pages visited by one reader per day (reading depth) - 4.

2004-05 season (October-March)

• Total visitors – 442 434
• Average daily visitors – 2 458
• Number of page views – 2 498 198
• Average daily page views – 13 879
• Number of pages visited by one reader per day (reading depth) – 5,65.

So, in 2004-05 season number of our visitors grew by 30% comparing to the previous season (2003-04). It is good news, but much more better news - is that reading depth became bigger despite the common practice (bigger auditorium - smaller reading depth).
This means that not only SKI.RU popularity is growing, but also growing the "stickiness" of our visitors to our web-site - i.e. our readers dedicate more and more of their time to the browsing of our pages.

Popularity leaders between SKI.RU content topics

The most popular topic "Slopes & Destinations" has its own internal rating:
Russia -44%, Austria - 20%, Bulgaria - 5%, France- 4,8%, Italy - 4,5%, Switzerland - 2,7%, Andorra - 2,6% etc. Among the interactive sections absolute leaders are "Discussion Board" and "PhotoGallery" (up to 30% whole portal visits).

Search positioning
SKI.RU optimized at the main search engines used by the Russian auditory for number of particular requests made in Russian language:

Google.com	Yandex.ru	Rambler.ru
Горные лыжи (Alpine Ski) – 5th place	SKI – 1st place	SKI – 2nd place
Горнолыжное (skiing) - 3rd place	Горнолыжное снаряжение (ski equipment) – 9th place	Горные лыжи (alpine ski) – 2nd place
Сноуборд (snowboard) -4th place	Горнолыжный портал (ski portal) – 1st place	Горнолыжный портал (ski portal)– 2nd place
Горнолыжное снаряжение (ski equipment) – 1st place	Сноуборд (snowboard) – 2nd place	Сноуборд (snowboard) – 11th place

Our Auditorium
All facts concerned with our auditorium profile provided from search pattern analyze and regularly executed on-line and off-line polls.

Geography of our visitors:

1. Russia - 70%
2. Ukraine – 4%
3. USA/Canada -2.2%
4. Germany -1.8%
5. Other countries -22%

Auditorium main body (core)
Auditorium core (visitors reading our pages 1 time per week and more often) - approximately 10 000 readers (September - March), and 2 000 readers at non season (April - August).

Equipment preferences

Skiing destinations preferences

Frequent skiers
More then 50% of SKI.RU readers make long trips (far from home and for 1 week or longer) more than 1 time per season, 22% do that more than twice. Weekend skiers - 70%.

Contacts
SKI.RU company CEO : Jul Orlov (editor@ski.ru)
phone +7 495 626 2888