Russia’s daily online audience is large, with WhatsApp leading at about 81 million daily users. This figure, reported by TASS through Natalya Borozdina, who heads the customer support sector of the Digital Mediascope segment, was shared during the National Advertising Forum.
Close on its heels is Yandex, the dominant search engine in the country, reaching roughly 68 million daily users. Google sits in third place with around 64 million daily users. The list of most-used platforms also includes Telegram at about 56 million daily users, VKontakte with more than 54 million, and YouTube with an audience of about 53 million each day.
Some services that once enjoyed top-tier popularity in Russia, such as Instagram, which is owned by Meta, have fallen out of the leading group. Borozdina notes that user attention has become more scattered across a broader mix of apps and services, including Zen and Ozon, which are gaining traction in the Russian Federation.
The National Advertising Forum of 2023 took place in Moscow from November 15 through 17.
In recent years, there have been periods when parts of the internet or certain services faced restrictions, interrupting communication at times. This underscores the importance of understanding how audience behavior shifts and how brands reach audiences across multiple platforms.