About 9 mln Ukrainians are active internet users, according to TNS Ukraine report. Each of them costs about $1 with about $7 mln spent on online ads in Ukraine last year, to double in 2007. By 2010 this figure will arrive at the rate of radio ad spents, Meta.UA experts say. The burst of Ukrainan Web attracts investors who were raising Russian online market before. Russian Funds and Digital Sky Technologies are holding the major share of Meta.UA, last week Finance.UA was acquired by them too.

One of Moscow's city courts satisfied a non-resident company's claim for its right for a domain name in .RU which spells the same as the company's name. We know many cases when domain names were legally returned to the trademark owners, but this is the first story about the plain word name. Anton Sergo, the head of Moscow lawyer company "Internet and Law" who shared this information, didn't disclose the name of the company. "But you can imagine the company called, for instance, Dandelion Inc, which now can legally grab the domain name Dandelion.ru from its owner", the lawyer explained. He admits this case can start a whole new revision of Russian domain market, although formally Russian law-court system does not support precedent model. Besides, the new edition of Civil Code part IV prohibits the registration of trademarks similar to the domain names already registered - but this law comes into force in Jan 2008 only.

Swedish Kontakt East Holding (KEH) plans to enter Russian online shopping market, in addition to its Yellow Pages Russia directory service. The company will spend up to $13 mln to launch an online auction. According to KEH's CEO Filip Engelbert they wouldn't buy any existing business, like Molotok.ru, for it's too expensive, $3-5 mln. Last year Russian online stores earned $2,5 bln which showing 150% year growth. The segment chosen by KEH seems weird though, for Internet users in Russia never showed much enthusiasm about auctioning online. Only 13% of them have ever tried it, according to recent Gemius study.

Last year women brands spent $1,5 mln on online ads in Russia, according to MindShare Interaction recent report. The main portion (37%) of these spents comes from makeup brands headed by Oriflame and Avon. They are followed by haircare (25%) and body treatment (16%) products, mostly Unilever's. Fashion brands are still very few on the web in Russia, local ones ahead. Dmitry Ashmanov from MindShare says this expends to double in 2007, although online promotion takes only 1% of woman brands' media budgets in Russia.