Russian internet services company Mail.Ru Group posted a 36 percent year-on-year rise in third quarter revenues to 4.965 billion rubles ($160 million), the company said on Thursday in a financial statement.

That was in excess of the 33.5 percent rise to 4.836 billion rubles analysts had forecast.

Mail.Ru Group traditionally only calculates revenues for the third quarter, which is why no profit or EBITDA figures are available.

The company's biggest earner was social networking services (Community IVAS), bringing in 1.503 billion rubles, up 72 percent. Banner advertising earned 1.075 billion rubles (up 7.6 percent) while on-line gaming brought in 1.166 billion rubles (up 30.8 percent).

The number of Mail.ru portal users, according to statistics company INS, was 31.9 million in September this year, up 16 percent on the previous year. The number of users for its Odnoklassniki social networking site rose 24 percent in the same period to 21.8 million.

The company has noted a slowing of growth in the media advertising market, Mail.Ru Group General Director Dmitry Grishin said.

"In the third quarter, there was an expected slowing in the advertising stock. Nonetheless, at the end of the third and start of the fourth quarter, we also expect a worsening in the advertising market," he said.

Investment fund Digital Sky Technologies, founded in 2005, was renamed Mail.Ru Group in 2010. The main shareholder is a structure belonging to billionaire Alisher Usmanov, South African holding Naspers and China's Tencent, which combined hold 81.14 percent of voting rights and 60.34 percent of capital.