By: Ivan Pleše, CEO of ATL and chair of the AdTech working group of the Croatian Digital Publishers Association (HUDI)
Ahead of the 14th SoMo Borac, the regional competition for the best digital projects taking place on 23 October, co-organised for the fourth consecutive year by the Croatian Digital Publishers Association (HUDI), we examine who actually controls Croatia’s digital advertising market today and why domestic media and agencies increasingly find themselves in supporting roles.
The column is written by Ivan Pleše, CEO of ATL and chair of HUDI’s AdTech working group. It was he who presented the first Croatian digital landscape at last year’s SoMo Borac, an overview of the display advertising ecosystem created by that working group.
Croatian digital advertising is worth almost €400 million: €372 million net last year, with growth of 9.5 per cent (HUDI AdEx). The foundation of that market – what gives it an audience, content, trust and a reason to exist at all – is Croatian media. Those same media, crucial to the functioning of the entire market, account for around €90 million. Less than a quarter. Spending through agencies grew by 5.2 per cent, half the rate of the market. The rest of the growth bypassed both, going directly to platforms and far beyond Croatia.
The question in the headline is therefore not rhetorical. There is an answer, so let’s take it step by step.
Because someone else has taken over the directing
I have nothing against technology. I run a technology company, and much of what we do relies on tools built by Google, Amazon, Microsoft or the wider community through open collaboration. Technology is excellent when it is a tool. Perhaps once, some 20 years ago, the idea was indeed for the market to use big tech as a tool: a platform for buying, serving and measuring advertising inventory.
The exact opposite has happened. Big tech uses our market as a tool for its own interests. Media provide audiences and content, agencies provide strategy and budgets, while platforms determine prices, rules, measurement and data – and increasingly make decisions on behalf of both sides. This is not a criticism of technology, but of the business model. And that model is not sustainable for something that is not just an industry, but also a pillar of the social order.
Because they do not play by the same rules
Croatian media are not extras because they are worse. They are extras because they play the same game by different rules.
In regulatory terms: a domestic media outlet is accountable to Croatian law, the regulator, the tax system and editorial responsibility for every published word or advertisement. Its competitor for the same budgets is accountable to almost none of these. When we mapped the first Croatian digital landscape at HUDI last year, it turned out that fewer than a third of the participants in key categories even operate under Croatian regulations.
In commercial terms: terms are announced rather than negotiated. Revenue shares, fees and rules are changed unilaterally, and publishers and agencies either accept them or walk away.
In technological terms: measurement, attribution and data are controlled by the same party that buys and sells. And with a pronounced lack of transparency. For example, in a smaller slice of the market, Open Market programmatic, most of the revenue reaches media without the buyer’s name – the publisher knows how much it has earned, but not from whom.
Because agencies no longer choose the leading actors either
It would simply be wrong to say that media are the victims and agencies are to blame. Agencies sit at the same table; their chair is just a little more comfortable for now. We have become accustomed to a model in which agencies are the directors who write the script and choose the leading actors, but unfortunately, that too is becoming less and less the case.
Their job is extremely important – knowing what, where, to whom, why and how to communicate. Platforms now offer that job in three clicks: an automated campaign that chooses for itself where an ad will appear, measures its own success and reports on it itself. When strategy is reduced to a budget and creative (which is also rapidly becoming part of the automated process), the agency becomes an operator of someone else’s interface. And the future of operators over the next 10 years of the media industry is highly uncertain.
That 5.2 per cent growth for agencies, alongside 9.5 per cent market growth, is not a statistical nuance. It is a very clear indicator of the direction in which the market is heading. And these are figures for 2025. Perhaps, for now, it is better not to project where we will be in 2028 with the surge of AI because, unfortunately, the transition from harvesters to harvest could be completed much sooner than we think.
Because we came to believe there was no other way
A question that is asked far too rarely: what exactly does big tech enable an advertiser to do that Croatian media cannot? We will address the topic from the perspective closest to media, which is display.
The answer is: nothing.
Reach? Together, the largest Croatian media outlets are, alongside Google and Meta, the country’s largest advertising platform, with a loyal audience that comes every day by choice. The top 10 media outlets measured by HUDI DotMetrics account for over 95% of all Croatian web users.
Targeting? Available, with known context and a familiar audience as a layer that BigTech cannot see.
Measurement? Viewability and delivery can be verified using independent tools, rather than only through the seller’s report.
Automation? Yes, the same as for other buying models.
So, what is the difference, then?
The difference is actually in what big tech cannot guarantee: environment and quality. Editorial content, known context, user loyalty and responsibility for what appears alongside an ad. If an advertiser cares at all about where it attracts its customers, the picture is clear: Croatian media have a considerable advantage here – and this is not a matter of patriotism, but of numbers. Numbers whose only KPI, admittedly, is not the cheapest possible click.
Can we reclaim the leading role?
We can. Are there alternatives? There are. None requires a miracle; but all require the market to stop waiting for someone else to put it in order.
First, see the market. You cannot fix what you cannot see, and for years Croatian display advertising was estimated through questionnaires and impressions. Signal, a tool we developed at ATL this year, is the first true intelligence layer for display advertising in Croatia: using real data from more than 70 per cent of all impressions in the market and a transparent, precise methodology, it shows for the first time who is advertising in Croatia and how much – to media, as well as agencies that want to understand where spending is really heading. For the first time in history, that information is not reserved exclusively for Google. And although we are talking only about the Open Market display segment here, we have to start somewhere and show that it is possible to level the playing field to some extent.
Second, set the rules. The HUDI AdTech certificate is a minimum standard of transparency, fraud prevention and fair conduct for every technology partner that wants to work with Croatian media. It is being registered as a certification mark at European Union level, it is awarded by an independent committee, and we expect the first applications in 2027. It will not change the market on its own. But a chaotic, half-destroyed market needs at least a line below which it will no longer go.
Third, and most importantly: work together. This is an appeal, not an analysis. For years, media and agencies have each been developing their own solution to the same problem – and every time, they solve it through the platform that created that problem. Models that return technology to its role as a tool cannot emerge on just one side of the table. A publisher can organise inventory, data and standards; an agency knows what an advertiser needs and how to plan, buy and measure it. Only when the two come together in a shared model – with known rules, shared measurement and value that stays with those who create it – does technology work for the market again, rather than the market working for technology. The landscape and the certificate have shown that working together in this industry is not a utopia. The next step is for media and agencies to take it with each other, rather than each on their own with a third party.
The answer
So why are Croatian media extras in their own market? Not because someone took their role away, but because media and agencies drifted far enough apart for a third party to fit between them and start assigning roles. That distance was not initially created by either a media outlet or an agency; it was created by a model in which both sides found it easier to talk to a platform than to each other. None of us individually set up this game. But no one except all of us together will change it.
An entire country’s media industry should not depend on a few guys in the US. The tools exist. The alternatives exist. As of this year, the data exist. What is missing is a decision – a shared one – and it is not in California.
