During the year of quarantine associated with the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic from the beginning of 2020 to the beginning of 2021, the Ukrainian audience of social networks expanded by 7 million people, GlobalLogic said, citing the results of a study conducted on the basis of open data.
“At the beginning of 2020, there were 19 million users [of social networks] in Ukraine. In 2021, the figure reached 26 million. At the same time, the penetration of social networks has increased by half: now 60% of the country’s population is registered in them, while in January 2020 it was only over 40%,” GlobalLogic said in a report on Wednesday.
According to GlobalLogic, since 2019, the number of Ukrainians on Instagram has increased by 22% and on Facebook by 7%. Now they are used by 14 million and 16 million Ukrainians, respectively.
“Over the past year, the new social network TikTok reached 16% of users from Ukraine. Its growth was 500%. YouTube remains the most popular social network with coverage of 96% of users in Ukraine. On average, they spend about 40 minutes a day in the service,” GlobalLogic.
The number of Ukrainian Internet users, according to the company, also increased by 2 million, which is 33% more than in 2019, and at the beginning of 2021 was almost 30 million, that is, about 67% of the country’s population.
According to GlobalLogic, there are more Internet users not only in Ukraine, but also in the world: since 2019, their number has increased by 280 million.
In addition, due to the pandemic over the past year, people around the world have seen 57% more videos and movies, 37% more music and 15% more podcasts.
GlobalLogic used data from open sources such as Data Report, State Statistics Service, Kantar and PlusOne, as well as internal statistics, for its analysis.
Video games are becoming an analogue of social networks, according to CEO of the DMarket in-game item trading platform Vlad Panchenko.
“Now, games are becoming social networks and, for example, the same Facebook and TikTok understand this very well. Their task is to make social networks games, to come up with a form and format where achievements, gameplay, 5G will be perfectly combined. And such a formula is already in development, there is no doubt,” he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
Panchenko also said that the monetization of the gaming industry has something in common with the monetization of multimedia. “If before the main method of earning for a game developer was from the actual sale of the game, now a lot will be packed into subscription services. The market is actively moving towards the fact that the developer will be paid, in fact, for user time spent in the game,” the DMarket CEO said.
He also expressed confidence that the next step in the development of the gaming business will be the introduction of the 5G mobile standard. “Closer to 2023 in a number of countries there will be enough 5G Internet so that users can play a GTA session that they started at home on a good phone on their way to work. Or continue playing Hearthstone, jumping from the phone, for example, to the refrigerator, not even to a TV panel. Such opportunities greatly transform the concept of games,” he said.
As reported, referring to Wargaming, which were citing data from the NewZoo report, the annual income of the video game industry in Ukraine in 2018 amounted to $179.2 million. This is 13.6% more than in 2017: then the Ukrainians spent $157 million on games.
