Web trends in Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine: stats

The demographics and technology adoption section of our Internet Statistics Compendium is probably the biggest single report of updated-by-month internet data you can get your hands on.

It’s a mixed bag too, covering top-line web usage trends as well as user habits across many markets and down to different demographics.

This month, the report saw a wealth of best bits collected from some fantastic Gemius research published in the summer (and available in full here).

It’s their research into the Russian-speaking internet markets of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine I wanted to focus on today.

By Luke Richards October 14th 2014 17:10

We know that Russia is a key internet growth market and that the country boasts the biggest web user base in Europe, but what of its neighbours?

How much of an impact is Russian digital progress having, and how are these markets similar or different to this significant and unique part of the globe’s digital landscape?

Numbers and growth

With 67m users, Russia is still the biggest Russian-speaking internet market. Yet, neighbouring countries Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine are undergoing their own respective digital evolutions too.

According to Gemius, Belarus sees internet penetration levels at 71%, having grown significantly over the past two years from 58%. The market’s actual web user numbers are around 5m.

By comparison, in Kazakhstan 54% of its population go online – around 6.7m users. And Ukraine has slightly lower penetration at 52% (up from 42% two years ago) but with more than 17m active users.

Demographic details

Like Russia, the Kazakh and Ukraine online landscape skews very slightly towards females aged under 35. In Kazakhstan, 53% of users are female and 65% are under 35, while Ukraine sees 52% female and 56% under 35.

Belarus doesn’t follow the pattern so closely, with internet users split down the middle 50/50 gender-wise – but still boasting mostly younger netizens with 55% under 35.

What users do online

So there are 28.7m of mostly young Belarusians, Kazakhs and Ukrainians using the Russian-speaking internet, but are their user habits similar to Russia and to each other?

The Gemius data sheds some light on this. The top 10 websites in Belarus by users is dominated by well-known domestic Russian sites with email portal Mail.ru at the number two spot (3m users), search engine Yandex at the number four spot (2.56m users), as well as social networks VK.com and Odnoklassniki at number three and number seven (2.64m and 1.45m users, respectively). US names such as Google, YouTube and Wikipedia are also visible.

Ukraine’s leading sites are a similar mix of mostly big Russian sites (Mail.ru, VK.com and Yandex) and a few US sites such as Google and Wikipedia. Facebook also makes an appearance, hinting at the popularity of a range of social sites within this market.

Kazakhstan’s top 10 sites do not, however, include any US named sites. Mail.ru and My.Mail.ru take the one and two spots (with 5.4m and 3.46m, respectively) and Russian social network Odnoklassniki is popular too at number three with 1.54m users. Apart from these three Russian leaders, though, the rest of the 10 are accounted for by domestic Kazakh sites such as portal Nur.kz and motoring classifieds site Kolesa.

Russian internet: more than a one market thing?

With the proliferation of the Cyrillic alphabet and official use of the Russian language across some of Russia’s neighbours, it’s unsurprising that the development of the Russian digital landscape is having an impact beyond its borders.

While there are similarities between Russia’s satellite markets, they are – of course – developing and evolving in quite unique ways. It is notable that Kazakhstan, for example, boasts 54% penetration with plenty more room for growth and is seemingly very much dominated by Kazakh web properties aside from Mail.ru and Odnoklassniki.

Ukraine, again, looks like a market where we can expect more numbers coming online in 2015 – but its top sites are more similar to what we find in Belarus and Russia itself; a mix of big Russian names and big US names offering search, social and information services.

Acknowledging Russia’s effect on the digital markets of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, it’s interesting to think about the Russian digital market less in terms of a country and more in terms of this group of markets.

At around 100m internet users altogether, these four markets boast more users than Central America and about the same as the whole Middle East. And as Russia’s digital landscape continues to evolve as well, I think it likely we’ll see Belarusian, Kazakh and Ukrainian netizens come to use an increasing number of Russian online services on into 2015.

Get with the programmatic: why brands need to understand the new advertising landscape

Econsultancy and Marketing Week have launched a conference all about programmatic advertising.

NB: The next installment of ‘Get with the programmatic’ will take place on 29 September in London.

Let’s set the tone by discussing why brands must understand this technology (obvious spoiler alert: to be successful when purchasing ad inventory).

But let’s also have a look at some of the terminology and the dynamics between publishers, advertisers, ad networks, tech platforms and agencies.

Article Digital Advertising

Ironically, five things that could stop clickbait

Once upon a time, the success of an article was judged by how interesting it was to read.

Of course, front page splashes, naked girls and free giveaways had an impact on print sales, but so, too, did regular columnists of quality and serialised work.

Essentially, serving your audience was thought to be important and publications often had agendas that went some way to determining their output.

I think this is still the case with print media, but one can’t ignore the fact that print is receding. As it does, news and media online is to some extent being depoliticised as social media allows any publisher to reach an extended audience. Reaching large audiences is important for driving up the cost of advertising inventory.

Don’t get me wrong, the sophistication of the internet is a good thing. It’s no longer acceptable or, more pertinently, advantageous to massively keyword-stuff your editorial or add the terms ‘porn’ and ‘XXX’ to your title tags.

Ad technology, too, is getting better at allowing advertisers to understand revenue associated with campaigns across platforms. But the fact remains that many believe advertising needs to break away from the religion of the impression.

If it continues, it’s going to become increasingly difficult to find subcultures. Parody and the parodied will be indistinguishable.

So, what can stop clickbait?

Article Digital Advertising

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on the power of the cloud

I had the pleasure of meeting Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce last week at Exact Target’s Connections conference in Indianapolis.

Together with other analysts from Gartner and Forrester, we were given some untethered access to him as well as to Scott McCorkle, CEO of Exact Target Marketing Cloud and Alex Dayon, President, Products at Salesforce.

In private, Benioff the man is very different from the on stage persona many of us are familiar with – the exuberant showman, evangelizing the company he founded with the all the energy and enthusiasm of a gospel preacher.

Any of you who have ever attended his company’s annual Dreamforce event will know what I’m talking about.

Like the oft-repeated meme in HBO’s Silicon Valley, the audience is presented with the idea of a business that’s ‘making the world a better place’. Superlatives abound as the crowd applaud.

Brothers and sisters, I believe in the power of the cloud! One thing’s for sure, Benioff and his team know how to put on a show.

Web trends in Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine: stats

Numbers and growth

Demographic details

What users do online

Russian internet: more than a one market thing?

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