Second quarter of 2022 sees a drop in Ukrainian online media audiences – IMI overview

In the first quarter of 2022, IMI experts recorded a 300% increase in the traffic of some Ukrainian media due to the war. However, in the second quarter, the audience of all media was recorded to already be on the decline.

This is according to SimilarWeb ratings' open data.

The only media that consistently remains in the top ten and has a growing number of clicks is TSN. In the second quarter, the average monthly audience of this media outlet reached 162.2 million. This is as much as 42.5% more than in the previous quarter. Only the "Espreso" wesite, whose audience suddenly increased by 57.4% compared to the previous quarter, showed similar growth. Interestingly, the sharp increase in the audience of these two websites contradicts the general trend on the market.

For the first time, "Obozrevatel" dropped out from the list of leaders in terms of audience. The "Espreso" website has been added in its place.

According to SimilarWeb, the list of the 10 most popular Ukrainian online media currently looks like this:

Compared to the previous quarter, only five media have improved their positions:

• TSN website moved up from ranking second to first. This was due to the monthly traffic increase. TSN's average indicator for the quarter has increased by 42.5%.
• "Liga" demonstrated the most stable position and audience growth, rising from ranking ninth to seventh.
• "RBC-Ukraine" has moved up one position from ranking sixth and is currently ranking fifth, although this is likely the result of general changes in the rating, as the website's audience has decreased by 13.8%.
• Channel 24's website climbed up two positions and is currently ranking sixth.
• "Espreso" entered the top ten for the first time, and is currently ranking ninth thanks to a 57.4% increase in audience. Last time it ranked 13th.

Over a third of the TSN audience (35%) opens the website through search engines using keywords. Another third (30%) goes to the website directly from the browser's starting page. 20% of traffic comes to TSN through reference links. Another 14% of traffic is being drawn in by social media.

The audience of Ukrainska Pravda most often opens the website via a direct link (58%). Through search engine keywords, traffic is 27%. Much less traffic from reference links (8.6%) and social media (5.6%).

In case of Novoe Vremya, the audience also mainly accesses the website through a direct link. A quarter of the audience visits the website with using reference links (25.5%). Social media traffic is 8.7%. 77% of clicks on the website are carried out from Ukraine, 5% from the US. However, almost 2.5% of the audience are russians peeking at NV's news.

Over a half (59%) of Censor's readers open the website using a direct link. The website receives 22.5% of traffic from reference links. Only 5.6% is being garnered through social media.

RBC-Ukraine's audience mostly (59%) accesses the website via a direct link. The traffic through reference links is 21.8%. 15.6% of the audience opens the website through search engines and keywords. And only 3% of the audience traffic is from social media.

More than a third (37.6%) of Channel 24 audience opens the website by searching for keywords on search engines. Direct clicks to the website and reference links accounted for almost 25% each. And an eighth part of the traffic (12%) is clicks from social media.

The audience of Liga mainly uses a direct link (37%) and keyword search (37%). A fifth part of the audience visit the website through reference links (21.5%). Less than 5% of the traffic is clicks from social media.

Although the website of Akhmetov's media holding Segodnya ceased its operations on July 11, in the second quarter it still ranked eighth with an average of 32.2 million interactions. Most of the audience came from Ukraine – 81.4%, followed by russians – 4.3%. Most often, readers opened the website using a reference link, which accounts for a third of traffic (30%). Another part, 22%, is direct links to the website. And only 8% visited through social media.

Almost half (43.6%) of Espreso's audience accessed the website using a direct link. Another part found content through social media (8.8%) and reference links (8.5%). 85% of website clicks were from Ukraine, much less from Poland (3.6%), Germany (2%), and 1.6% of interections were from russia.

The audience mostly opens Gordon website via a direct link (37%). A fourth part of the audience traffic (25%) is reference links. 6.5% of the website's traffic comes from social media. Traditionally, 10% of traffic comes from russia. As IMI analysts noticed, russians have been maintaining a high views rate of the Gordon website for over a quarter. Almost 3% of traffic comes from Kazakhstan and Germany each.

IMI experts also analyzed the 10 most popular websites according to other key indicators: the time of the visitors' stay on the website, the number of pages viewed, and the bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who left the website immediately from the home page or viewed no more than one page of the website). The experts noted the following:

• For the second quarter in a row, IMI researchers have found that the RBC-Ukraine website has unusually long user stays. In the second quarter, this indicator amounted to 21 minutes 42 seconds. At the same time, one user opened 2.94 pages (?) on average. This indicator was also high last quarter: on average, one session lasted as much as 32 min 43 sec.
• "Impulsive behavior" was recorded among Espreso readers. On average, they spend 1 minute 46 seconds on the website, but at the same time, they rarely go to its other pages. The rate per person is 1.43 pages.

As previously reported by IMI, SimilarWeb is not a perfect tool for measuring media popularity, as its data may contain errors. This was discussed on liga.net. Therefore, it is better to evaluate the website's readership by the number of unique visitors. However, open resources do not show these data.

In August 2022, IMI announces the rating of 40 Ukrainian media by views numbers for three months of 2022. The figures provided are taken from the SimilarWeb resource: