The Croatian Association of Digital Publishers (HUDI), in collaboration with Momentum, an Austrian agency specializing in the creation of digital AdEx with over 15 years of experience, and Ipsos, a member of HUDI and the leading market research agency in Croatia, has made a new assessment of investment in digital advertising in the local market for 2022. The research is being conducted for the second consecutive year, but while last year only the Croatian Association of Digital Publishers worked on the research, this year it is joined by the Association of Publishers of Informative Publications (UNIP) and HUP-Association of Newspaper Publishers, they state in a press release.
This year’s HUDI AdEx identified interesting trends among the main stakeholders in the market. The overall market in 2022 remained approximately at the same level as in 2021, with a growth of only 1.3 percent. The largest growth occurred in ‘traditional’ advertising formats (display, video, native) amounting to 10.1 percent. The slowdown of the entire market is conditioned by the decline and lower growth of revenues from global technology platforms. Search platforms show modest growth of only 3.7 percent, while social networks record a decline of as much as 6.2 percent. This is a clear result of market instability on a global level.
€64 million invested
Advertising in Croatia, which includes technology platforms, i.e., advertising on search platforms and social networks, is of significant amount, and the total amount of investment will be available soon. In the ‘domestic market’, a total of €64 million was invested in traditional formats, including Google Display Network and YouTube.
—
—
The so-called Display advertising segment remains the dominant format, followed by Native and Video advertising. When we delve deeper into Display and Video formats, we notice that mobile advertising has reached a share of 75 percent in display formats and as much as 82 percent in video formats, while so-called programmatic advertising accounted for 42 percent of total display and seven percent of total video advertising in 2022. In-stream makes up 2/3 of video advertising, while the rest are out-stream video formats.
The total investment in digital advertising, which includes technology platforms, is significantly higher, and a follow-up study of HUDI digital AdEx in partnership with Ipsos Croatia will segment total revenues and clarify the investment strategy across all platforms. For the first time in Croatia, we will see how individual companies invest based on their size and industry and show what portion of digital advertising revenue goes through agencies and publishers, and what portion is direct leasing with technology platforms.
—
—
– For the first time in Croatia, publishers and associations HUDI, UNIP, and HUP-UNI have gathered and jointly decided to conduct research to provide the market with objective and relevant results, which are the foundation for the development of Croatia’s digital market and defining strategic guidelines for all stakeholders involved in the regulation, transformation, and improvement of digital advertising. The second year of HUDI AdEx research continues to break stereotypes about the digital advertising market and provides an accurate insight into trends among the main stakeholders. The industry has recognized local media, and the trust shown is also visible in the trend of investment in Croatian publishers, – said Zoran Turković, CEO of 24sata.
—
—
– Hanza Media, as a leader in the media market in Croatia and founder of HUDI, encourages every form of market research, including research on total investment in digital advertising. I am pleased that the data shows that the growth of media leasing consumption is over 10 percent, which, according to previous research, indicates a continuation of the positive trend from the previous year. Numerous projects we have launched and plan to launch at Hanza Media will certainly contribute to the increase in media leasing across the entire market, and HUDI will, I am sure, continue to be part of the progress of the media industry in Croatia through its activities, research, and data sharing, – stated Ana Hanžeković, CEO of Hanza Media.
HUDI brings together key digital publishers who together account for more than 80 percent of the total readership of all portals in Croatia (source: Gemius & Dotmetrics). The high reach of HUDI allows for the use of a ‘bottom-up’ methodology based on reported advertising amounts from Croatian publishers. With this approach, HUDI can accurately estimate the total investment amount of all Croatian publishers.
The amounts from global technology platforms (Google, Facebook, etc.) are collected through official business reports, ensuring objectivity in the assessment and including investments that come through agencies, as well as through direct leasing of advertising on social networks and search platforms. Direct leasing is the main method of advertising for smaller companies and businesses. Currently, in Croatia, technology platforms like Google and Facebook do not report revenues generated in the Croatian market, so this research allows for a precise estimation of total spending even through global platforms.
In the second year of data collection on spending in digital advertising, the model has been improved with new data sources and new knowledge that allows for even more accurate estimates of the revenues of technology giants for 2022 and 2021, as well as revenue forecasts for 2023.
The war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, bank failures, and inflation are factors that make the market unstable, so it is important to look at the trend of the overall market, which consists of a large number of companies from the SME segment, and not just large companies and clients of the largest publishers and agencies. We are also witnessing important regulatory and strategic changes at the EU level related to the overall digital market. In this context, understanding the marketing part of the digital market is a crucial factor in applying new regulatory guidelines that are also awaited by the Croatian market.
Price increases of over 30 percent
The importance of precise measurement of the overall digital advertising market has also been recognized by Real Group.
– Given the complexity and fragmentation of digital channels and their measurement, we are very pleased that there are initiatives in the market that will help us better analyze and understand the use of different digital channels, while also considering the entire market and the differences in industries and the size of each individual client. We often overlook the fact that digital is a mix of different channels and formats that play their role in achieving goals for specific industries, products, and services, – says Maja Šplajt, Director of Digital Media at Real Group.
—
—
As Šplajt states, it is important to have a broader picture of the entire market to understand the movements and distribution of budgets realized through each individual channel: local portals, as well as global platforms such as Meta and Google, which are the primary advertising channel for the SME segment.
– Especially in digital media, we encounter price increases year after year, and in the last 2-3 years and throughout the year, both in domestic media/portals (depending on demand for specific formats) and in global platforms where we notice price changes that often exceed 30 percent, and such movements should be included in research and put into the context of overall digital spending. We believe that the research will only build on itself year after year, so we will be familiar with the distribution of investments by individual industry and even more detailed by each individual channel and format that make up an increasingly important part of the media mix, – she concludes.
The entire HUDI AdEx research will be available very soon. We invite all those interested in the overall picture of investment in digital advertising and the ways different companies advertise to follow us.
Digital AdEx is just one step towards a better understanding and improvement of digital advertising in Croatia. This year, HUDI’s strategic activity is to establish a unified measurement for all portals to further work on the standardization and development of the digital advertising market in Croatia.
The project of researching digital AdEx was led by a working group composed of digital advertising experts from various publishers. The group is chaired by Petar Pavić from Red View Media, and other members include Luka Duspara from 24sata, Igor Cenić from Hanza Media, Edin Preljević from Index Promotion, Vedran Vereš from Telegram Media Group, Marija Kopljar from RTL Croatia, Đuro Vitković from NovaTV, Toni Janjiš from Tportal, Matej Sever from Ipsos, and Dražen Tomić from Optimus Prime Informatika.
