Last year the number of Russians online went up by 14%, to 53m. That made Russia’s online population Europe’s biggest, just ahead of Germany’s, with lots of room left to grow. GP Bullhound, an investment bank, reckons that only 18% of those people shop online and that online advertising, though rising fast, takes up only 9% of Russian ad budgets.
The Russian internet market looks more like China’s than either resembles anything in the West. Baidu dominates Chinese search. Tencent plays a similar role to Mail.ru, of which it owns 7.8%. When the Chinese buy online they turn to Dangdang, 360buy or one of Alibaba’s online marketplaces rather than Amazon or eBay. They tap out a cacophony of short posts on Sina Weibo, not Twitter. And so on.
Read more at The Economist
