Year of Meta's Blockage in Russia: How the Advertising Market in Social Media Has Changed

The absence of competitors in the form of giant American companies has created the most comfortable conditions for Russian platforms to develop, forcing users and advertisers to adapt to the services and interface that Russian VKontakte (VK), Odnoklassniki, Yandex.Dzen and messenger Telegram can offer.

Who stayed with Meta?

After the block in March 2022, the audience of Instagram in Russia decreased from 31% to 6% of users, Facebook – from 7% to 2%, and Twitter – from 11% to 7%. The average daily coverage of Instagram in Russia before the war in Ukraine was 39 million people. In the first three months of the block, this number dropped to 11.7 million users. Facebook dropped from 6.7 to 2.2 million users.

I want to remind you that Instagram and Facebook were blocked, recognized as extremist, and banned in the Russian Federation. However, the audience on these social networks remained and stabilized in 2023. Furthermore, users bypass the block using VPN because posting and reading posts on these social networks is not yet prohibited. However, I would like to note that advertisers cannot collaborate with Meta because Russian authorities may classify contractual relationships as sponsoring an extremist and banned organization. In turn, Meta has disabled the ability for Russian users to place ads.

Facebook in Russia was not widely popular even before the war. It was more of a place for discussions for a narrow intellectual and politicized audience. Instagram has become a mandatory working channel for communication with clients and increasing sales for small businesses in Russia. Its blocking costs the most to small producers of goods and services and creative teams that promote themselves through Instagram. They lost part of their audience and customers.

Where did the authors and advertisers evacuate to?

Russian companies have shifted their advertising activity from blocked social networks to Dzen, VK, and Telegram. The first two are part of the Gazprom-Media holding, Odnoklassniki, startups Rutube and Yappy (Russian TikTok).

Before the blocking of American competitors, VK and Odnoklassniki had zero audience growth. Odnoklassniki continued to lose users even in 2022. On April 19, 2023, the company published a report showing its audience at 36.5 million users, compared to 40 million in the previous period. Nonetheless, with no audience growth, advertisers have nowhere to go, and Odnoklassniki saw a 9.9% increase in advertisers and a 61.7% increase in revenue from small business advertising.

The same thing happened to the resource “Dzen,” which did not increase its audience but doubled the number of authors creating content in the hope of monetization.

The biggest beneficiary of Meta’s blocking was the social network VK, which in 2021 was headed by the son of the first deputy head of the Russian Presidential Administration, Sergey Kirienko, Vladimir Kirienko. Close People LLC believes that his position in top management gives the company ruthless competitive advantages and the ability to use administrative resources. VK grew its monthly audience from 78 million in 2022 to 85.7 million in 2023.

However, it is too early to rejoice. The most active social network users are young people aged 12-24 who use the application as a messenger and are often outside the target audience of advertisers due to their low purchasing power.

Telegram has shown a two-fold increase in its audience after the blockage of Meta’s products. However, Telegram is not quite a social network and is intended for something other than visual content. The audience of Russian bloggers on Telegram is only 10% of their audience on Instagram. This platform has a niche but also benefits from competitors’ blocking.

Chinese TikTok showed a slight growth over two years, from 62 to 68 million monthly users in Russia, even though the platform banned Russians from posting new content. Russians spend the most time on TikTok – 65 minutes (17 minutes on Instagram, 39 minutes on Telegram, 45 minutes on VK, and 5 minutes on Facebook).

In April 2023, State Duma deputies raised the issue of the possibility of unblocking Twitter. The new owner of the social network, Elon Musk, lifted restrictions on accounts of Russian politicians and organizations. But Roskomnadzor reminded us there are no grounds for unblocking Twitter, as the platform should remove 1300 prohibited materials.

The fate of Twitter will not affect the Russian advertising market due to the platform’s peculiarities and the small number of users, which amounted to 2.6 million people in Russia before the blockage and 1.3 million after the backup.

Let’s sum up

Meta’s restrictions on its users from Russia and the Russian government’s blockage will be maintained for the next few years. Sanctions create favorable conditions without competition for the development of Russian social networks “VK”, “Odnoklassniki”, “Dzen”, and Yappy, which are part of the state-supported holding “Gazprom-Media”. Russian users and advertisers will be forced to cooperate with available platforms that allow them to earn. The Russian authorities, in turn, receive controlled and politically reliable social networks and expand the base for a sovereign internet.

It is accepted that when Instagram is unblocked, it will quickly regain its lost positions. Monitoring of Close People LLC in the Russian segment of social networks shows that most companies, if they are not affiliated with government structures, continue to update content on their pages on the platform, waiting for the thawing of relations. It takes time for a final break with Instagram, provided by the Russian authorities and the Meta leadership.