Despite facing headwinds in the domestic advertising market, 2023 emerged as the strongest year in over a decade for Russia’s marketing communications sector, according to a comprehensive assessment conducted by the Association of Communications Agencies of Russia (ACAR). The organization’s analysts reviewed the country’s marketing communications footprint for the previous year, applying a fresh framework that redefined how advertising activity is measured and understood across different channels.
ACAR explains that the new evaluation model shifted away from traditional categories such as television, internet, radio, print, and outdoor advertising. Instead, the assessment focused on the combined impact of video, voice, broadcasting, Out-of-Home (OOH), and Internet services. This broader lens was used to capture the evolving ways brands reach audiences in a rapidly changing media landscape.
At year-end, ACAR’s estimates suggest that the total advertising volume across all media reached roughly 731 billion rubles, marking a 30% increase from the previous year. This expansion indicates a notable rebound in marketer activity and demonstrates how a diversified mix of channels contributed to overall growth within the sector.
Within the video segment, which includes television and online video, the market demonstrated strong momentum with a year-over-year rise of about 20%. This brought the segment’s total to around 231.5 billion rubles, highlighting ongoing demand for audiovisual storytelling and shorter, digitally distributed formats that engage viewers across screens.
The voice category experienced the most pronounced growth, climbing by approximately 32% to reach 20.2 billion rubles. Radio accounted for the majority of this segment, with about 19.5 billion rubles attributed to radio advertising, reflecting steady demand for audio-based campaigns across traditional and digital radio formats.
The publishing domain also expanded, reporting a 10% increase to reach 25.4 billion rubles. The Out-of-Home category showed particularly strong expansion, rising by 41% to 67.1 billion rubles, driven by the continued effectiveness of visual messaging in public spaces and transit hubs. In 2023, the outdoor advertising market itself grew by 38%, reaching 57.7 billion rubles, underscoring the sustained relevance of large-format displays for brand presence and local market penetration.
Internet services, encompassing online platforms and digital ecosystems, grew by 37% to total 386.6 billion rubles, illustrating the ongoing pivot of advertisers toward digital environments as audiences increasingly engage with content online. Collectively, ACAR’s analysis indicates that the total volume of Russia’s marketing communications market in 2023 amounted to approximately 1.7 trillion rubles, surpassing the previous year by about a third and signaling a broad-based recovery across multiple channels and formats. Attribution: ACAR analysis of 2023 advertising market metrics.