🛍 Advertising Market Growth Slows

According to estimates by the Association of Communication Agencies of Russia (AKAR), the industry’s growth rate fell below the annual inflation rate for the first time, which Rosstat recorded at 5.86% as of the end of March. The dynamic of promotional expenditures decelerated by a factor of 2.2 compared to the first quarter of 2025, when the market posted an 11% expansion.

Sergey Veselov, Vice President of AKAR, attributes the slowdown in the advertising sector to a challenging macroeconomic environment and a scarcity of market catalysts; during the first quarter, the country’s GDP contracted by 0.2%. Against this backdrop, internet services emerged as the sole segment to post distinct positive dynamics, gaining 8% to reach between 117 billion and 118 billion rubles. Video advertising (encompassing linear television and online video) demonstrated stagnation, ticking up by a marginal 1% to land between 67.5 billion and 68.5 billion rubles.

Concurrently, the audio and publishing segments entered negative territory. Expenditures on audio advertising contracted by 4% to between 4.7 billion and 4.9 billion rubles, while budgets within the publishing sector fell by 7% to between 4.8 billion and 5 billion rubles. The sharpest decline was recorded in print media, which plummeted by 14%. Detailed metrics for the Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising market were withheld from this reporting cycle, as the association’s experts were unable to reach a consensus regarding its valuation parameters.