A marketer explained the growth in popularity of VKontakte, a social network that has surpassed YouTube

The Russian social network VKontakte is advancing in all directions and has become much more popular even with bloggers who previously preferred to use only the video hosting site YouTube. As marketing expert Denis Fedorenko explained in a comment to Izvestia, such success is also due to the fact that the site is exclusively Russian and supports patriotic content.

"This actually speaks of some feelings of patriotism in people and the convenience of using content, because after all, this is a platform that is exclusively ours, Russian. And does not support the "trend of Russophobia", which, being on the same YouTube, everyone feels and meets clips in which our compatriots are not very well treated. In "VKontakte" there is no such thing," he pointed out.

As the marketer noted, "VKontakte" actively promoted its platform in all directions and not only rebooted its work, but also offered good commercial conditions for bloggers who previously occupied the YouTube niche.

"Everyone began to actively broadcast their blog in VKontakte itself. <...> In this way, information is spread everywhere. When you have, let's say, 10 key opinion leaders who have moved to this platform officially and actively call there, whether you want to or not, even if you are not subscribed to them, you will hear about it," - said Fedorenko.

Earlier in the day, a study by Mediascope showed that the social network "VKontakte" in December 2024 for the first time overtook video hosting YouTube in terms of reach among Russians. The monthly reach of VKontakte among Russian users amounted to almost 92 million, while YouTube was used at least once in December by 89.6 million Russians.

Prior to that, on December 13, 2024, the Association of Bloggers and Agencies told Izvestia that the audience of Russian video services increased by more than 30 million over the year. Thus, VK Video's audience grew by 4.3 million, to 72.2 million, VK Clips - by 9.8 million, to 66.6 million, and Rutube's audience jumped by 17.9 million, to 58.3 million. The audience of Nuum, which began operations at the end of December 2023, amounted to 5.2 million. At the same time, YouTube's performance is gradually declining: the average daily reach of this video hosting in October decreased by 2.3% and amounted to 46.2 million people, while in January it was 54.2 million.