Illustrating the growing traction of Russia’s mobile advertising market, TNS Russia has started publishing data on the popularity of mobile applications, the Russian business daily Vedomosti reported last month. This ranking differs in important ways from TNS’ list of the most popular sites via traditional web access in Russia.
The application of leading social network VKontakte (VK.com) is the most popular application among mobile device owners in Moscow, according to TNS. In October, 50.9% of mobile Internet users in Moscow accessed this application.
In second place was Yandex.Maps and in third Youtube. Google came in forth and messenger WhatsApp in fifth. In total, according to TNS data, 4.3 million people used mobile Internet in Moscow in October.
The top five applications by daily audience are slightly different: VKontakte, WhatsApp, Instagram, Yandex.Maps and Youtube.
The rating of mobile applications is very different from TNS’s list of most popular websites on computers and laptops in Russia. For example, the mobile Internet top ten only includes one Yandex application, Yandex.Maps.
Methodological issues
This is the first time that TNS Russia publishes mobile Internet data since the company previously only studied the traditional online audience. However, for all the seriousness and accuracy of TNS, these measurements pose two methodological issues.
Firstly, TNS’s data on the mobile Internet covers only Moscow. Secondly, these measurements take into account only the traffic of mobile applications and not that of the mobile versions of websites.
For example, Russian social network Odnoklassniki is not in the mobile top ten, while it appears as the seventh most popular site in Russia, with a 37.3% share of audience, in TNS’ traditional ranking.
“Odnoklassniki members currently use the mobile version of the site more frequently than the application,” explained Alexey Katkov, commercial director of the Mail.Ru Group, Alexey Katkov, in Vedomosti.
“If you look at the TNS data including the entire mobile audience [not just mobile applications], it is clear that Odnoklassniki is the sixth most popular site [on the mobile Internet in Russia],” he added.
