RuStore’s Funnel Pulls in the East
Russia’s digital market is drawing growing interest from Asian companies. Advertising investments by foreign developers in the RuStore app marketplace increased fivefold over the past year.
The Scale of the Play
If in 2024 foreign spending on advertising and special projects on RuStore stood at about 80 million rubles (roughly $1 million), in 2025 it exceeded 400 million rubles (about $5 million). Chinese developers accounted for 70 percent of that total. RPGs, strategy games, and adventure titles led overall ad spending, while the fastest budget growth was seen in puzzle games, up 25 percent, arcade games, up 16 percent, and action titles, up 8 percent.
Those investments are paying off handsomely. Revenue for the same group of Chinese developers on the platform jumped 18-fold, and their games now account for 30 percent of all transactions. “After integrating with RuStore, our revenue grew by more than 25 percent,” said a representative of Efun, the developer behind the game Athena. The average purchase value for foreign games stands at 650 rubles (around $8), suggesting that Russian users are willing to pay for high-quality content.
Taken together, these figures point to RuStore’s commercial maturity as a marketing platform. Every second user of the Russian internet interacts with the app store, creating the critical mass needed for large-scale monetization.
Growth Drivers
Rising investment from Hong Kong, CIS countries, Singapore, Vietnam, and South Korea indicates that Russia is becoming part of the Asia-Pacific digital orbit. For Russia’s digital economy, this means reduced reliance on Western ecosystems while plugging into new global markets. For users, it translates into a broader choice of apps, ranging from practical services to entertainment.
Foreign companies’ interest in promoting through RuStore is not accidental. Since 2025, preinstallation of the domestic app store has been mandatory on smartphones sold in Russia. That requirement underpins steady market growth. At the same time, Russian audiences continue to show strong demand for monetized mobile gaming, making the market even more attractive for publishers.
From Store to Ecosystem
In a short time, RuStore has evolved from a simple app store into an ecosystem with its own internal economy. Launched in 2022 as an Android beta, the platform was already working with more than 10,000 developers from 40 countries by 2024.
By 2025, RuStore ranked second among app stores in Russia, trailing only Google Play. Developer revenues within the ecosystem increased fourfold, and the platform’s geographic reach expanded to 70 countries.
Today, RuStore is more than a storefront for apps. It functions as a full-featured environment for building and scaling digital products. Developers do not just publish apps but actively use advertising tools to promote, monetize, and grow their projects.
A Commercial Asset
The expansion of RuStore’s advertising toolkit could further improve conversion rates and draw in new countries. Growing competition is also pushing Russian developers to step up their efforts, with their advertising budgets nearly doubling.
In 2026, the platform plans to strengthen its position as a commercial asset by developing its own payment infrastructure to ensure stable purchases and subscriptions. More broadly, Russia’s digital economy is demonstrating its ability to build technology ecosystems that attract global market players.
