Advertisers are slashing their ad budgets on Wildberries after a series of Ukrainian drone attacks on the company’s warehouses, the Kommersant business newspaper reported Wednesday, citing sources at major ad agencies.

From June to July, ad tracking firm Digital Budget said spending on direct banner ads on Wildberries plummeted 63%.

A source told Kommersant that many advertisers had either frozen their promotional budgets or sharply cut back across major retail categories, including electronics, household appliances and pharmaceuticals.

Meanwhile, average ad prices fell by up to 15% as product availability fell. Analysts explained that advertising becomes ineffective when sellers run out of stock or face delivery delays.

Wildberries acknowledged lower ad activity on its platform but insisted that the extent of the decline was exaggerated.

“Some change in the volume of advertising and promotion tools is understandable,” Wildberries told Kommersant.

“In the current environment, sellers are reevaluating their economic models to assess the impact on their businesses,” it added.

Analysts estimate the ad slump on Wildberries could last two to six months as Russia’s largest e-commerce company rebuilds damaged infrastructure and reroutes supply chains.

Russia’s marketplace ad platforms grew by 58% to 580 billion rubles ($6.9 billion) in 2025, according to the Interactive Advertising Development Association. That accounts for over one-third of Russia’s digital advertising market, which totals 1.57 trillion rubles ($18.9 billion).

Wildberries and its chief competitor Ozon ranked among Russia’s top 10 largest advertisers in 2025, with the former spending 7.8 billion rubles ($94 million) and the latter 9.7 billion rubles ($117 million) on digital ad campaigns.

Ukraine has attacked almost two dozen Wildberries logistics centers since mid-July, accusing the company of supplying the Russian military with drone parts and other equipment.

Both Wildberries and the Kremlin have rejected this characterization. Since the strikes, the company appears to have removed a search tag from its website linked to Ukraine war paraphernalia.

The strikes have wiped out a significant portion of the e-commerce giant's storage capacity and cost third-party merchants hundreds of billions of rubles, according to Forbes Russia.

Denys Shtilerman, head of Ukrainian defense firm Fire Point, said the targeted attacks were partly aimed at harming Russia's economy and hoped it could trigger a financial crisis.

Last month, Wildberries launched a major advertising campaign across Russia with the tagline “support entrepreneurs with an order.”

AFP contributed reporting.

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