autobanner.ru ("Autobanner.ru"; in the header of later versions of the home page — "Автобанер.Ру") was an automotive-themed banner network, a project of the Nizhny Novgorod company "NN.RU". In the web archive the site can be traced from September 2000 to early 2016.[1][6] The Nizhny Novgorod tie was stated right on the home page: "A project of the company 'NN.RU'", impressions were sold by "the company NNRU" via the phone number (831) 419-77-99, and correspondence with the administration went through the mailbox bear@nn.ru.[1][6] "Autobanner" called itself a Russian network, but in the Nizhny Novgorod rating counter.nn.ru and in the catalog of the nn.ru portal it was listed as a local one.[2][3][4]

How the network was organized

The 2000 home page described the project as follows: "Autobanner.Ru — a Russian banner network for the auto theme, a project of the company NN.RU based on BannerBank technology." [1] The network consisted of two subnetworks — the 100x100 format and the 468x60 format; impressions were allowed to be transferred to other members without commission or restriction, and could be converted from one subnetwork to another.[1] The network's commission was "exactly 15%" in both subnetworks, with no extra charge for targeting and other services; all types of targeting were available, including reverse targeting.[1] The core of the system was BannerBank technology.[1] In April 2001 "Autobanner.RU" concluded a strategic partnership agreement with the agency "MediaLand" ("МедиаЛэнд"), which owned the LBN banner network: the network's mechanism was moved to the agency's servers, and the same report named Mikhail Iosilevich as head of "AutoBanner.Ru".[8]

Technical requirements for members were spelled out in the same place: no more than two 100x100 banners and one 468x60 banner per page, GIF and JPEG formats up to 12 KB, and member pages must not violate the laws of the Russian Federation.[1] Combining "Autobanner" banners with banners from other networks was discouraged, while placing more than four banners from different networks on a single page and "using any means of inflating impressions" were expressly forbidden; a separate clause ruled out "playful, unclear and flickering banners".[1] Moderation was manual: "All banners and sites are checked manually," the home page stated, reserving the right to refuse a site if the administration deemed it "not informative enough, uninteresting, or not matching the network's theme".[1] Manual review was also confirmed by the network's own head: in an interview with CNews he explained that members wanted their banners shown only on Russian automotive sites, so it was "necessary to manually check all sites registering in the system" and separately filter out "playful or incorrect" banners.[8]

Who was in the network

In September 2000 the home page listed the "main members of the network": "Gazeta.Ru Auto" (gazeta.ru/auto.shtml), "Nizhny Novgorod AutoUzel" (autonn.ru), the server of the newspaper "7 Verst" (7verst.carsale.ru), "Krasnoyarsk AutoSite" (autost.ktk.ru), "AutoShina.RU" (autoshina.ru), "Woman at the Wheel" (miss.car.ru), the site of Sergei Vinsky, and TSS (tss.nn.ru), "and others".[1] The list reveals the project's design: a Nizhny Novgorod company gathered automotive sites from various cities under its network, and alongside Moscow and Krasnoyarsk resources it included two local ones — "Nizhny Novgorod AutoUzel" and TSS in the nn.ru domain.[1] The invitation to join sounded selective: "Serious automotive sites are welcome to join the network".[1]

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The prominence of "Autobanner" in the Nizhny Novgorod Internet is measured via Counter.nn.ru. In the rating summary for September 30, 2000, in the "Projects" section, the site stood at line 37: the counter showed 3688, with a rating value of 30.94.[2] Three lines above, in 34th place, was the Nizhny Novgorod Banner Network — described as "Nizhny Novgorod banner network" — with a counter of 4945 and a rating of 34.16: that is, the two banner networks, the local one and the automotive one, sat right next to each other in the rating.[2]

In the nn.ru portal catalog, "Autobanner.ru" appeared in at least two categories, and in both, next to the name, hung a counter.nn.ru rating figure — linked to the same counter card No. 954 by which the site appeared in the 2000 summary.[2][3][4] In the category "Firms (Enterprises): Advertising: Internet Advertising", as of February 14, 2002, it showed "Rating: 84.97",[3] while in the category "Projects: Auto Projects", as of June 20 of the same year, it showed "Rating: 607".[4] The catalog description was extremely brief — "Automotive Banner Network".[4] More on how this body of data is organized — in the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

Later years and the fate of the address

By 2011 the home page had shrunk to a working cabinet: a login form with login and password fields, links "forgot your password?" and "if you are not registered in the system", a block "ABOUT THE NETWORK", and a link to the page "active network members and network statistics" marked "yesterday in AutoBanner 100x100 (ctr — open)".[5] The 468x60 subnetwork had by then, as the home page stated, "moved to the address auto.lbn.ru", and "Autobanner" remained a single-format network — this was fixed even in the page title: "Автобанер.Ру — Automotive banner network 100x100".[5] Impressions were sold by "the company NNRU" — phone (831) 419-77-99, address info@autobanner.ru — and the page separately announced: "WE ACCEPT WEbMoney".[5] At the bottom hung a link to the "Nizhny Novgorod Auto Forum" and text ads — ranging from an online store of foreign-car spare parts to pizza and Yokohama studded tires.[5]

A snapshot from January 9, 2016 almost verbatim repeats the 2011 page: the same wording about a 15% commission, the same move of the 468x60 subnetwork to auto.lbn.ru, the same link to network statistics, the same phone number (831) 419-77-99, and the same note "Automotive sites only".[6] Over the last five years of its life, about the only thing that changed on the home page was the block of text ads at the bottom: instead of the former dozen listings, only one line remained, about windshield replacement.[5][6] The last home-page snapshots in the web archive date to the first months of 2016.[6]

When checked in August 2026, the site at this address responded.[7] We did not examine what is currently hosted at autobanner.ru.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2000 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — counter.nn.ru, "Projects" section rating, September 30, 2000 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — nn.ru catalog, category "Firms (Enterprises): Advertising: Internet Advertising", February 14, 2002 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — nn.ru catalog, category "Projects: Auto Projects", June 20, 2002 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Home page, 2011 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Home page, 2016 (archive)
  7. autobanner.ru — availability check of the domain, 2026 (archive)
  8. cnews.ru — "Autobanner.Ru" and "MediaLand" — strategic partners (interview with Mikhail Iosilevich), April 23, 2001