The Central and Eastern European media markets faced difficulties in 2022 caused by the Ukrainian-Russian war: inflating prices and lowering purchasing power slowed down market growth, so the regional market expanded by 2% and reached 9.7 billion Euros. Consumer behavior trends are unaffected: certain global streaming services are just entering the CEE markets, while TikTok is getting more and more popular – also for brands.
weCAN, the network of independent advertising agencies of Central and Eastern Europe recently published its annual media market analysis on their new data and content platform,
weKNOW. This platform is freely accessible and features the detailed analysis of advertising markets in 14 Central and Eastern European countries, with focus on advertising spending and media consumption habits. Besides compiling extensive data on the development of CEE’s media markets over the past year, weKNOW boasts regular articles from media and creative experts about current trends and agency news.
Market boom disrupted by war
The economies of the Central and Eastern European countries just barely recovered from the effects of the pandemic, when on 24th February 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine, causing instant and serious shakeup in almost all segments throughout the region. CEE economies faced supply chain disruption, energy price increases, which lead to sometimes record high inflation in the region and a decline in living standards, extending to the media markets in terms of shrinking budgets paired with inflating prices.
The war also had more direct effects on the media markets: in the Baltic states, Russian produced content got banned, which mostly impacted Latvia’s media market with the biggest share of Russian TV: prices increased for other channels, and audience numbers dropped, also driving investments to other segments.
In Hungary, where the state has been the biggest spender in the past years, state-owned media expenditures overall decreased visibly after elections – however, The Prime Minister Office is still the number 1 spender.
Among these less favorable conditions and following the 2021 boom of COVID bounce-back, the regional media market showed a slight growth of 2%, reaching net 9.7 billion euro. Even though digital boasts the biggest share of 51%, it kept this position since last year with a 3% YoY growth.
Not just digital, all segments kept their share compared to the previous year, meaning that the main trends such as the digital boom, the small shrinking of television and also the constant decline of press all slowed down in 2022.
Unwavering popularity of VOD platforms and TikTok
weCAN experts observed less change in consumer behavior trends: the average TV viewing time decreased in all countries except Hungary and the Czech Republic (no data from Ukraine), despite the Football World Cup, and in almost half of the CEE countries ATV sank below pre-COVID levels.
This in connection with the prominence of VOD platforms, exemplified by major global players like HBO Max, Netflix, SkyShowtime and Disney+ entering markets in 2022, in the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Serbia and Slovakia, or already dominating them. weCAN experts reported that regional platforms such as Voyo, or local ones such as České kino (CZ) are also growing in popularity. This highlights the fact that local content is important for CEE consumers, regardless of linear or connected TV.
In terms of social media, Facebook is still the most popular social media platform in Central and Eastern Europe, but all weCAN experts emphasized the importance of TikTok, especially among Gen Z users and its trendsetting feature with short format videos. While the advertising platform of TikTok is still not yet available in all CEE countries, it is becoming essential for campaigns targeting the younger age groups and brands are finding ways to advertise to this audience through branded content and influencers.
The regional and country reports can be accessed at
weknow.wecan.net.
For more information please
contact us!
