Here are the figures from the CIA World Factbook. The GDP figures are "purchasing power parity" adjusted, apparently.
RUSSIA
GDP: US$1.535 trillion (2005 est.)
GDP per capita: US$10,700 (2005 est.)
Household income or consumption by percentage share:
lowest 10%: 1.7%
highest 10%: 38.7% ( 1998 )
JAPAN
GDP: US$3.867 trillion (2005 est.)
GDP per capita: US$30,400 (2005 est.)
Household income or consumption by percentage share:
lowest 10%: 4.8%
highest 10%: 21.7% (1993)
In other words, the average Japanese GDP per capita is 3x the Russian figure, and that wealth is spread much more evenly through the population. Japan's economy is immensely stronger than Russia's is, right now, and even if Russia grew at 10% a year and Japan stagnated (which isn't happening - Japan is growing comfortably) it would take 15 years to start to catch up.
The Russian advertising market stands at US$3.86 billion and is growing VERY fast (according to the article below) but only US$55 million is being spent on the Internet (even though it's the fastest growing advertising market)
http://beta.therussiajournal.com/?p=50
However, Japan's advertising market stood at 5,857.1 billion yen (US$49.6 billion) in 2004 according to a report by Dentsu, Japan's largest advertising company. Of that, 181.4 billion yen (US$ 1.53 billion) was spent on Internet advertising (and again it's the fastest growing advertising segment).
http://www.dentsu.com/news/2005/pdf/2005006-0217.pdf
In other words, Japan's advertising market is nearly 13x the size of Russia's and the internet portion of Japan's ad market is 28x that of Russia.
If you factor in the population size, things get even worse. Russia's population is 143,420,309 but Japan's is 127,417,244 meaning that advertisers are spending US$26.91 per person on advertising in Russia, but US$389.28 per person in Japan. Online, the numbers are US$0.38 in Russia vs US$12 in Japan.
It will be a very, very, very long time before Russia catches up.
The one saving grace for Russia seems to be that users are generally more internet-savvy, so there is a greater prospect of near-term typein traffic. But all the other numbers overwhelmingly favour Japan, to a stunning degree!
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For completeness, I'm going to add China into the mix below.
CHINA
GDP: $8.158 trillion
GDP per capita: $6,200
Household income or consumption by percentage share:
lowest 10%: 2.4%
highest 10%: 30.4% ( 1998 )
Population: 1,306,313,812
At a breakneck, impossible to sustain 10% growth rate, it would take China 17 years to reach Japan's current GDP per capita. Again, that's assuming Japan magically stops growing today.
China's internet advertising spend in 2004 was 2 billion yuan (about US$248 million) according to the link below (I'm having trouble finding good figures). That's US$0.19 per person.
http://www.researchandmarkets.com/re...port_id=306692
BTW, there's an amazing amount of info on China available here...
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=435051