VK Video hits 400,000 authors, pays out 3bn rubles as VK proposes antifragile metrics

August 22, 2026 · adindex.ru

By February 2026, VK Video's author base had grown to 400,000, and those creators earned more than 3 billion rubles over 2025, according to Nikita Guryanov, head of media platform analytics at VK. Guryanov uses these figures to illustrate what he calls antifragile metrics: a framework for judging whether a mature product creates value on its own, without relying on discounts or paid acquisition to keep users coming back. He points to Mediascope data showing Russian online video consumption fell 11% year on year between January and May 2025, even as 105 million people, 86% of the population, still go online each month. In A/B tests, Guryanov writes, teams must explain why an effect occurred before shipping a change: 'teams need to explain the cause of the effect, test it on different user groups, and check what happened to other metrics.'

Attribution and analytics vendors serving advertisers face the same trap Guryanov describes: a campaign metric can rise while the underlying experience erodes, and a dashboard built only on reach, time spent or conversion volume misses that shift. The Weixin Channels test he cites shows the alternative: measuring click-through, post-click conversion, watch time and quick scroll-aways together revealed that a recommendation change improved commerce performance without pushing users out of the feed. Media buyers evaluating platform-reported growth numbers should ask the same question VK's analytics team asks internally: is a metric moving because the product creates more value, or because it is extracting more from the same audience?