VKontakte surpassed YouTube for the first time in terms of monthly reach in Russia

The decline in the audience of American video hosting in Russia occurred against the background of a slowdown in its work. Compared to 2023, the number of users decreased by 6% and compared to November – 1.8%. VKontakte’s audience increased by 2.8% over the year, according to Mediascope calculations.

March 2024 saw YouTube’s highest monthly reach in two years. At that time, the platform was visited by more than 96 million Russians. YouTube’s audience drop to 92.9 million people occurred in September, as the platform’s performance deteriorated. VKontakte’s audience was growing, but slowly: from 90 million people in March, it only increased to 90.5 million in September.

A VKontakte representative explained the changes by improving the performance of the VK Video and VK Clips services. According to him, “they updated their recommendation algorithms, expanded their base of original content and launched new monetization tools for authors.”

Denis Kuskov, director of the TelecomDaily agency, believes that the growth in coverage is explained by the active marketing policy of the company, which is promoted not only on the Internet, but also on television and radio. At the same time, the expert noted that YouTube coverage has decreased slightly and Russians are likely to resort to all possible options to access the platform.

YouTube in Russia began to slow down in the summer of 2024. On December 19, subscribers of MTS, Megafon, T2 and Beeline began to complain about problems accessing the service on mobile devices. Prior to this, the slowdown only affected the desktop version. An RBC source in the media market admitted that YouTube faces a “total block” in Russia.