More than 100 million people in Russia visit at least one social network every day. The most visited social networks in Russia are the following, in order.
- VKontakte
- YouTube
- Odnoklassniki
The public differs greatly. Eighty percent of all users of VKontakte – VK – are under 34 years old. Odnoklassniki targets an average age audience, between 34-45. Facebook and Twitter are mainly used by people with advanced technical, social or business skills, such as managers and executives. Instagram is more popular among women ages 13 to 34. YouTube users come from all these demographics.
The most active users live in big cities. Almost 70% of all visits to social networks come from mobile devices.
Understanding the VK
VK is the most visited social network in Russia. SimilarWeb gives it a global traffic of 7. Alexa ranks 15th. The network itself claims 97 million visitors a month. Most of them speak Russian, but it is open to the world and supports more than 80 languages, including English and Arabic, as well as Asian languages. About 2 million accounts on VK have "USA" in their location field.
What makes VK different from other networks is that you can download, store, share and find all the files you want, even music and videos. All these media can be used in advertisements. VK tries to protect the rights of the author, but especially when the owner of the copyright complains.
VK is heavily used to promote products and services. This does not irritate users. In fact, the Russians do not find the promotions annoying. Eighty percent of users follow their favorite brands to stay up to date with new products and special offers.
The most watched commercials are fashion, health, events, gadgets and travel. The ads on fashion have the highest conversion: about 40%. Then comes well-being and health, with 32%.
Interestingly, Russians prefer to search for products on VK from mobile devices, but often make a purchase from a desktop.
VK Promotions
Advertisers on VK must first create on the account, which requires an e-mail address and a mobile phone number. The number is required to send an activation code and, also, inform you of the critical actions with your account. Thus, having a cell phone number attached to a VK account makes it difficult for hackers to steal to take control of the account.
If you use Facebook, you can easily manage VK. There are many advertising options on the platform. The most used ones are community ads, page ads, news feeds, stories (which are a copy of Snapchat Stories), and live video. All ads have many targeting options.
Your first step in advertising in VK will be to create a community, then create an audience with engaging content: text, images, video, audio, and downloadable files. You can also create menus and add products for sale, in a mini-shop.
- Community advertising. After creating a community, you will have access to advertising tools. VK has its own integrated placement market to find the right community for your existing posts or to offer your community audience to other advertisers. An article in the fashion and beauty category that can reach 1 million impressions will cost around $ 70. Overall, ad prices vary considerably, depending on the category and the quality of the audience.
- Ads on the page. These ads appear on the left side of the VK pages, but only on desktops. Advertisers pay by impressions or clicks. A thousand impressions will cost about 0.25 to 25 cents. One click will be close to $ 1.
- News Feed ads. You can publish your posts in users' news feeds. They will see the announcement among the other posts while scrolling the stream. A thousand impressions will cost around 4 dollars.
- Stories are a way to share your short photos and videos without publishing them on your page. Your friends and followers will see the story at the top of their news feed in a separate block for 24 hours after posting. You can add signs and stickers to your content to enrich it.
- Live. Live broadcasts look like regular videos. They start playing automatically when they are seen on the news feed. As soon as you start a live video, subscribers and friends are notified and can participate with one click. Live is only available on mobile.
VK is not difficult to use. And do not be afraid of the language difference. Remember, more than half of Russians speak English.