The Impact of War on Internet Audiences — Summer 2022 Research Update

At the beginning of the summer, we published research on the digital market of Ukraine. Newage analysts analyzed the general state of digitization of society, such as the spread of the Internet, use of technologies, visits to websites, etc. In 2022, a significant part of the study was devoted to the impact of the war on Ukrainian society; we investigated this impact based on open data, statements of officials, and our own information about the digital audience. With the arrival of autumn, we updated the data. In this article, newage will present new information: how many Ukrainians remain on Ukrainian-controlled lands at the end of summer 2022, what are the intentions of IDPs and refugees; how the behavior of Internet users has changed.

The General State Of The Population

Internally Displaced People

As of May 2022, we had ~8 million internally displaced persons. By mid-summer, the official figure dropped to 6.3 million. Still, by the beginning of September, according to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the number of internally displaced persons had increased to 7.1 million. According to our estimates, this figure should be 15-30 % higher, because some men avoid registration in the National Register of Citizens.

There is also information about the intentions of those internally displaced persons who have returned to their usual place of living. And this data is inspiring because a high percentage of those who have returned have no intention of changing their place of residence again in the future — as many as 74% of those surveyed. Another 14% of respondents intend to move, and 12% have not decided on their plans.

Refugees

According to UNHCR data, as of August 19, 11.2 million people left Ukraine, and 4.8 million crossed the border in the direction of Ukraine. This count includes border crossings by foreign citizens (for example, volunteers, workers of international organizations, etc.), and as well as multiple border crossings by one person (for example, those traveling for work). Accordingly, the number of Ukrainian refugees cannot be derived from these figures arithmetically and is equal to 6.7 million people.

If we talk about the intentions of these people, then 13% of them plan to return to Ukraine. The same number of respondents are undecided about their plans, and 63% want to stay in the host country. It should be noted that the survey provides declarative data, and objective reality can motivate people to change their minds.

Speaking of the refugees’ intentions, the bureau also identified what exactly keeps them in their current location. These data give hope that later Ukraine will be able to create favorable conditions for the return of people. Most people who are abroad are concerned about security (51%) — that is, these people are likely to return after victory. The rest of the factors, such as family ties, employment, or studies, are mentioned by far fewer respondents.

In general, the rate of population outflow is decreasing. If during March 3.3 million people left Ukraine, then in June ~1 million

People Under the Occupation

20% of the territories of Ukraine and ~3.6 million people remain under occupation. This estimate is based on data on IDPs, the population of the occupied regions before the start of a full-scale invasion, and data from open sources. This number has not changed since the beginning of the summer, but we are currently waiting for the release of new information based on the results of successful counter-offensive actions in September.

Conclusion on the audience

Summarizing the factors, as of the beginning of September we have the following population situation:

1. There are 6.3 million internally displaced persons
2. There are 6.7 million refugees abroad
3. There are 3.6 million people under occupation.

Accordingly, at the beginning of September 2022, there were 25.5 million Ukrainians (aged 14-70) in Ukraine, of which 17.8 million were active Internet users.

Technologies and online behavior of people

After a significant rise in the popularity of news sites at the beginning of spring, during the summer we observed a gradual increase in e-commerce and in the segment of conditional entertainment content (social networks, messengers).

Such an increase indicates the return of the audience to the usual media consumption. Also, newage researchers suggest that TikTok has also grown following YouTube and Instagram over the summer. Still, this growth is missing from the visualization above because the graph is dedicated to web pages, while TikTok is mostly used through the app.

“People are returning to normal media consumption, watching entertainment content. This is normal because we are all human. But this also means that the number of audiences and advertising impressions will increase,” says CEO newage. Oleksandr Rolskyi.

Buyer behavior

We can observe the behavior of buyers in several e-commerce projects. For obvious reasons, we will not specify exactly which stores these are, but they are well-known enough to be indicative. Despite the global data on the growth of online stores during the summer, we can state that these three clients have reached a plateau in terms of traffic and the number of transactions since June.

The trend is the same for all three sites. These are all large stores that are difficult to show significant growth because they already cover the whole of Ukraine. That is, their current level can be considered stable. Unfortunately, now there is no tendency to grow or return to the pre-war level, because the number of buyers has decreased, and their needs and consumer intentions have changed.

Advertising activity

The advertising industry is gradually recovering. According to the IAB, a third of companies have resumed 50-75% of their advertising activities since May.

Google shared with us exclusive data on how they see the dynamics of retail advertising impressions in Ukraine. On this graph, we see positive dynamics, but it should be understood that the graph starts from March, and we do not see what the indicators were before the Russian invasion.

“I asked for data for February, but a Google representative said they couldn’t do it. Probably, so as not to demotivate the market and not to show the point from which we were all thrown off. But if we compare March with the middle of June, we see constant positive dynamics,” said Oleksandr Rolskyi.

We also received information about advertising by the device. A high number of mobile ad impressions is expected, as we have become much more mobile users since the invasion began, but surprisingly Smart TV ads came in second place, ahead of desktops. At the same time, the cost of impressions on TV was the lowest, and on PC – the highest.

This distribution suggests that advertisers should carefully study placements and continue to consider Smart TV as a potentially useful format.

Labor Market

An issue that we did not cover in May, but it is worth considering, is the state of the labor market. We took data from two job search portals: Djinni and Work.ua.

The Djinni platform specializes in the IT sector, so the data on it is somewhat specific. According to Djinni, there are >54K candidate profiles as of July, which is 50% more than in January. Most of this growth is “active search,” meaning candidates looking for a job. The number of candidates in “passive search” increased by only 16% (June/January).

As of July, the activity of recruiters on Djinni is 20% lower than before the Russian offensive. At the same time, the number of candidates has recovered and continues to grow, which indicates a possible departure of the labor market in IT from the state of the “candidate market”.

On Work.ua, we were able to review information about vacancies in the field of marketing. Here the situation is similar: the number of resumes is growing rapidly, but the increase in vacancies has decreased by five times – even in New Year’s week, companies were looking for more marketers than now.

Conclusions

1. Ukrainian society is going through turning points in history and is changing at breakneck speed. During the summer, the following trends in people’s digital behavior should be recorded.
2. The number of refugees and displaced persons has increased, but the rate of population outflow is gradually decreasing. According to our calculations, the number of people under occupation remained constant during the summer, but we can already wait for new information based on the results of the counter-offensive.
3. The behavior of the Internet audience is normalizing, and interest in social networks and e-commerce is gradually increasing. Although the latter has also stabilized and large stores have already reached a plateau in terms of audience and number of transactions.
4. The advertising market is gradually recovering, and the number of advertising impressions has been steadily increasing since March. At the same time, you should pay attention to SmartTV, which came in second place in terms of the number of impressions, being the cheapest CPM placement by Google.
5. In the labor market, the number of candidates significantly exceeds the number of vacancies.