How to advertise on Vkontakte?

• Over 190 million registered users
• Over 42 million visitors a day
• 7 out of 10 users live in Russia and are aged 25+
• Relative to the general internet population, most of Vkontakte users are men aged 18-34 with graduate school education, who browse the web from home 

So how can you reach these users? One way is by using display ads called Targeted ads in Vkontakte (source in Russian), which generally consist of a title, an image and a short caption. Very similar to display ads on Facebook, VK Targeted ads appear on the left side of the page and are offered on a pay-per-click or pay-per-view basis.

Targeting options include geographic and demographic data such as age and place of residence, along with more specific characteristics ranging from the users’ general interests to the subways station near their work. In the latter case, of course, you have to be careful not to over-limit your target audience, because most users tend to disregard such details in their profiles.

According to the announcement made by Vkontakte general manager at a SEO Conference in September (source in Russian), VK advertising system will get two important additions this year:

1. VK advertising network, which will allow VK ads to appear on partner sites outside of Vkontakte similar to Google Adwords Display Network; (the launch was planned for this October, but apparently had to be delayed)
2. A cookie-based retargeting system similar to that of Faceboook Exchange, which allows targeting VK ads based on user behavior outside of the social network, such as searching for products and browsing comparison sites (launch planned for December: we’ll be waiting!). 

Social media world map (source: RIA Novosti)