You're reading: Report: Ukrainians browse more, online advertising yet to boom

Ukraine is a land of promise for online marketers. It has the largest population in Central and Eastern Europe, and one of the fastest growing Internet audiences in the region. But advertisers have yet to cash in on these opportunities.

These are the findings of a new report by Gemius SA, a research and marketing agency. Made public this summer, the group’s most recent report gives a unique peak at the region’s online community and business opportunities.

Ukraine is one of 15 countries of the region analyzed in the report, which covers a period between December 2010 and December 2011. Ukraine had the highest audience growth in the region, 17.5 percent for the audience segment over 14 years of age.

That translates into 2.4 million real users, and brings the total number of users to 13.6 million. By comparison, the Internet population of the region grew by 9.2 percent, or by 12 million real users.

Yet the Internet advertising market remains weak in Ukraine. Advertisers only spent about 4 euros per user on online ads, the third lowest figure in the region after Belarus and Romania.

The good news is that online advertising grew at the fastest rate in the region, by 57 percent compared to 2010. Ukraine’s online advertising market reached Hr 440 million, Yandex Ukraine CEO Sergei Petrenko was quoted in the report as saying.



The volume of online advertising in Ukraine remains one of the lowest in the region.

The report shows that Ukrainians really like their social networks. There are four of them in the top 10 most browsed websites. Three of them are Russian – Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki and Fotostrana. International giant Facebook is also on this list.

 “One of the few market segments where the leadership belongs to a local player is online shopping,” the report says. Online store Rozetka.ua has a very strong position on this market.

Last year Ukrainians changed their perception of the purpose of Internet browsing. “Ukrainian internet users began to perceive the web more as a source of advice on offline matters. Taking a look at the chart makes clear that the website categories which grew most rapidly in 2011 were Health & Medicine, Women, Entertainment & Leisure,” the report says.

The website which grew most in the first category was eurolab.ua, a medical portal, which had a mere 6,000 real users in December 2010, and a surprising half a million a year later.

Just over 50 percent of users are male, down from 51 percent a year prior. Women, however, tend to be a bit more active online.

Users with a higher education constitute the largest group of Internet users (41.2 percent). But their share if falling, along with the share of those lacking formal education (by 3 and 2 percent, respectively.)

Residents of cities over 500,000 make up the biggest group of Internet users – 45.7 percent. The rate of Internet penetration in Ukraine is 33 percent.

In Ukraine, less than 5 percent of all page views were generated using mobile devices in 2011.  While not much, it’s still higher than the regional average, which stands at 3.8 percent.  In 2011, Ukrainians mostly used Nokia phones for browsing, but its share is falling; Apple’s is rising.

 

Kyiv Post Deputy Editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected].