Russia's major marketplaces faced a decline in user activity in April. This was caused by new measures implemented to restrict VPN traffic within the country. According to Digital Budget, the largest decline was observed on the Wildberries platform: mobile web traffic decreased by 10 percent, and desktop traffic by 6 percent. This is reported by Ixbt.com .
Other major platforms also recorded negative dynamics. Specifically, mobile traffic for Ozon and Yandex Market decreased by 3 percent, and Avito by 1.5 percent. Experts believe that VPN bans primarily affect mobile users. Many users keep their VPNs constantly enabled to access other services, which leads to slow performance or interruptions in marketplace applications.
According to Strategy Partners, the decline in application traffic reached between 2 and 10 percent, while sales volume dropped by up to 4 percent. Sellers noted that in April, revenues decreased by 3 to 30 percent compared to March. This situation has also affected the overall turnover of the e-commerce market, causing losses of approximately 7 billion rubles.
In this situation, platforms with their own ecosystems and internal traffic channels are at an advantage. Specifically, Yandex Market has the ability to offset some losses through its search engine, browser, and advertising services. Platforms dependent on external traffic from social networks and messengers remain the most vulnerable.
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