Ukrainian ad market starts to recover
NOVEMBER 8, 2023 09.53 EUROPE/LONDON BY CHRIS DZIADUL

Ukraine’s advertising market this year will be worth 55% of 2021’s total in national currency terms. According to Ocean Media Plus, which is a partner of Starlight Media, one of the country’s leading media groups, as of the first 10 months of 2023 around 450 advertiser brands had already returned to national TV stations. As of October, pharmaceutical brands accounted for 45% of commercial airtime and FMCG around 30%.

Andriy Partyka, president of Ocean Media Plus, said: “Television remains the most effective and at the same time the most underrated media for advertisers.And the activities of large international advertisers that took place in 2023, and especially in its second half, are a confirmation of the high efficiency of television – clients are placed on the air, add budgets, launch new brands and, most importantly, see the effects and positive impact on sales and their business. ?

“Television supported the business with a very loyal pricing policy during the most difficult periods of 2022 and 2023, and will continue to do so in 2024, because our prices will still not catch up with cumulative consumer inflation in three years. We at Ocean Media Plus have already started negotiations with the advertising market for 2024, most of the top media agencies have already received our offers and in the near future we expect a high level of negotiation activity regarding clients’ advertising campaigns. We assessed the advertising market and must state that some of the clients will not return, they have been lost by Ukraine forever: businesses that were located in the occupied territories, in the front-line zones, whose owners are from Russia. But at the same time, we are watching how the vacated niches in the market are being replaced, how businesses are starting to advertise new brands, for 2023 there were more than 30 launches on television. Some of the clients are actively advertising themselves to take vacant niches now, because they know that it will be much more difficult to do after the war”.

Ocean Media Plus predicts that in 2024 the TV advertising market will grow by over 50% in local currency (hryvnias) due to increased investments of current advertisers and the return of those who are not currently on the air but have such plans.