Search engine Yandex has launched a platform for content creation and distribution, which it calls Yandex Zen.
Yandex Zen is an AI-powered and personally targeted content feed which goes out to millions of users worldwide. The platform is open to anyone from large media companies to ordinary bloggers.
In addition to potentially expanding a publisher’s audience, there is also the opportunity to monetize content published on Yandex Zen, as the company explains.
“Companies can use it to tell their stories, promote their brands, distribute marketing materialS and use native advertising to engage with their customers. For independent authors, Yandex Zen offers a means to earn money from advertising while publishing their stories to a wide audience.”
Unlike other content distribution platforms, Yandex Zen will present content in a flip-through format with screens that allow for photos, GIFs, and videos. Pieces of content being published on Yandex Zen are called “Narratives.”
In addition to being published on the Yandex Zen domain, content from the platform will be recommended to those who use the Yandex browser, the Yandex mobile app, and Yandex’s own home page. The company’s recommendation engine is powered by AI, so recommendations will be personalized for each individual user.
Yandex Zen currently boasts a respectable time-on-site metric at an average of 20 minutes per user per day. That suggests once readers are in the Yandex Zen ecosystem they are likely to click around and read more than one piece of content.
For now, Yandex Zen is only available in Russia, but the company assures other markets are to follow.
