Dibrov and Novozhenov will become managers of the new Internet portal

Popular TV presenters Dmitry Dibrov and Lev Novozhenov will head the new communication portal top4top.ru , the launch of which will be officially announced over the next two weeks. The investor in the project was the Russian Media Ventures (RMV) fund, owned by Video International shareholders. Investments in the project by domestic standards are very substantial: $ 10-15 million, of which $ 4.5 million will be spent on advertising, Kommersant writes , citing a source close to Video International.

The Internet portal top4top.ru will offer users various communication services: mail, photo and video sharing, blogs, chats and a number of others. “The scale of the project is also indicated by the fact that they are ready to purchase audio and video content, so far none of the major portals have done this,” an anonymous source shared with Kommersant newspaper.

The Russian Media Ventures Foundation was established in 2003 to invest in media projects. The founders are Peter Gervy, founder of STS and Maximum radio, and a group of investors, including several shareholders of Video International.

According to independent experts, for $ 10-15 million you can make a "smart" portal, which is quite capable of getting closer to the "Big Four" (Yandex, Rambler, Mail.ru and RBC).

The creation of this portal is yet another evidence of the emerging dot-com boom on the Russian Internet, which is associated with the rapid growth in the volume of online advertising. According to MindShare Interaction, in the first half of 2007, the cost of online advertising reached $ 150 million (of which $ 88 million was for contextual advertising). By the end of the year, the volume of the online advertising market will reach $ 360–370 million.

“Venture funds are ready to give money for a successful team that has already implemented some kind of project on the Internet, but there are few such teams in a rapidly growing market,” says TNS Media Director Gallup Media Ruslan Tagiev.