The media market in 2022, Croatia

Biggest event of 2022 was RTL selling their business to CME Group, making it the biggest media transaction since CME Groups sold Nova TV to United Media. Local media market grew by 19% in 2022 which was a great result considering energy crises and war in Ukraine. 

OOH had grown, digital OOH was the main factor of growth as the leading provider Go2Digital expended its outdoor network, and small providers started doing DOOH as well (Frkaplus, Hololab, Naf) and even the biggest classic outdoor provider Europlakat (JCDecaux) installed 4 large outdoor digital screens in 2022 (3 in Zagreb and 1 in Rijeka). The digitalization of outdoor increases investments because campaigns can have shorter active periods, shorter time for activation and production costs are usually lower. However, agency estimation is that OOH budgets will be the first in line when next recession hits and marketing budgets are cut, and because of that OOH will not come close to TV or online investments. That could change if outdoor providers started to charge for impressions which will make DOOH more of a performance media and less attractive for cuts. We are not that far away from that scenario as in 2023 new provider Adluux started selling impressions on their small DOOH network.

Radio went through the digitalization process as well, but as it was not a legal obligation for FM radios to swich to DAB, not one of them did it. Only 2 DAB radios are now active in Croatia, Nacional (owned by print publisher Nacional) with national coverage, and Tvornica (owned by club Tvornica) with Zagreb metropolitan coverage. With low DAB technology penetration, their reach ceiling is 5%, but there we can target high-income urban population. The biggest radio group renamed the top radio station Narodni to Bravo introducing foreign music and positioned Top radio as the leading station in the rock scene and rebranded Gold FM (oldies) to Happy FM (domestic folk).

Print is the only media that suffered another drop in investment, falling to 17m €.