Gazprom-Media Holding at EEF 2023: AI technologies, SME support, and international partnership

Using the example of Gazprom-Media Holding and international partnerships in current realities, I would like to point out that we are actively cooperating with South Korea, Mongolia, and Latin America. Over the past 18 months, 70% of international sales of our films and series production have gone to the countries in the Asian region, primarily China. This year, the Thai market, which is relatively new for us, has shown interest in Russian content. We are now actively negotiating the sale of content rights with several major players in the Thai market.

AI technologies are coming to us in the media faster, as we are very close to people, and we are getting ever closer. Only six months or a year ago, the first pictures generated by neural networks appeared, yet now in our lab, already about 80% of work with animation is done by AI. Media is gradually becoming a process. We won’t receive content recommended by systems, but will get content generated for us by our digital footprint. We will be constantly communicating with media. That is why it is extremely important what neural networks are trained on. At the moment, it is Western datasets on Western culture. But we are already actively training them on our folklore and our cultural array. Localizing datasets is now one of the most important tasks.

Alina Efimova

Deputy General Director for Sales and Business Development of Gazprom-Media Sales House

For promoting Chinese brands on the Russian market, it is necessary to remember that in Russia, the key role is played by traditional media: television, radio and outdoor advertising. However, today the share of SMEs in the Russian TV advertising infrastructure at national level is quite small at between 2 and 4%, while at regional level, in cities with a million inhabitants, it has increased from 20 to 30% in the last two years alone. In radio broadcasting, the share of SMEs has increased from 21% to 25% over this period.

Russia and China have already been holding crossover competitions for the last two years. Moreover, Chinese athletes prepare and train in Russia. A very broad sports program has been prepared within the EEF framework by Roscongress and federations with the support of the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation. Now, for example, eight countries are taking part in the rowing program.

Our advantage is the availability of a large media resource that we actively use to support social initiatives. At the same time, our efforts are aimed at development and assistance, regardless of the region in which we operate. This is the power of the media: the breadth of coverage and drawing attention to a wide range of issues. We also understand that contact with the audience is very important for results, a dialog that online format can never replace. And that is why Gazprom-Media Holding experts travel to the regions and hold creative meetings, lectures and film screenings, and invite people from all over the country to participate in projects, thereby expanding the geography of our initiatives. As a result, we invariably see the result: social investments have a quantitative and qualitative effect, which we record as part of implementation of the Holding’s corporate social responsibility program.