comScore: Russia fastest growing online population

Online marketers may want to pay a bit more attention to the fast-growing Russian online population. According to a recent report from comScore, Russians are logging on to the Internet faster than any other European population.

by Kristina Knight

Researchers with comScore found that Russia's Internet usage grew 23% in the past year. There are now more than 14 million unique users online from Russia. The Spanish user base jumped 18% and the Irish user base grew by 16% during the reporting period. Meantime, the largest online audience in Europe still belongs to Germany with 33 million unique users. Overall there are now more than 226 million users online in Europe.

“Many countries in Europe are still demonstrating robust growth in Internet usage,” said Bob Ivins, comScore EVP of International Markets. “And given the relatively low Internet penetration in several major European countries, there is plenty of upside in the European market. Russia, with only 12 percent of its population online, appears poised for substantial growth.”

The highest online penetration belongs to the Netherlands. According to the report 82% of the country's population over the age of 15 is online. Sweden, Denmark and Norway followed the Netherlands with 73% penetration in Sweden and 72% online penetration in both Denmark and Norway. In these countries, users spent more than 25 hours online in September 2007.