The past year showed just how sensitive media budgets have become to every shift, while the market, algorithms and audience behaviour created a sense of complete unpredictability. Oscillations are no longer the exception but the norm, and in such an environment the real question becomes how to maintain control over direction, not how to “lock in a budget.” For the UM Skopje team, however, every change served as an opportunity for creative solutions and innovation.
Media teams have been pushed to re-examine almost all the “rules” that once served as a safe anchor. Reach without attention, big plans without real impact, and fixed flowcharts increasingly lose meaning at the moment when flexibility, testing and clear priorities become essential. The most real and relevant performance indicators, at least in markets like ours, once again become sales, number of inquiries and registrations.
The conversation with UM Skopje, a member of AMA Group, offers the perspective of an agency that sees 2025 as a year of learning. Panic turns into structure, small shifts prove to have stronger impact than big plans, and they enter 2026 without illusions of stability – but with a clearer framework for decision-making. Roza Petrovska – Managing Director, Irena Uzunovska – Client Service Director, Lile Hristova – Digital Advertising Manager, Simona Petruševska and Gabriela Kozarova – Media Planners, and Saška Tepavac – Media Buying Director, shared insights into concrete changes in strategy, digital, planning and buying from their perspective.
Roza Petrovska, Managing Director
- If you had to describe 2025 as a year in which media budgets behaved like an air conditioner – sometimes “cooling,” sometimes “heating”, what was your biggest win in stabilising the temperature?
2025 was the year we learned that, if we can’t control temperature changes, we can control how we respond to them. The biggest win was building a culture of flexibility and trust – a team that doesn’t panic when budgets “cool” and doesn’t lose focus when they “heat up.” Instead of searching for the perfect temperature, we learned to read changes and react to them. Every oscillation became a signal for innovation, and every crisis a space for creative solutions. In the end, stability didn’t come from a rigid plan, but from the ability to adapt quickly, thoughtfully and together.
- What new type of client panic appeared this year, and how did you turn it into a calm, rational plan for 2026?
The new type of panic that emerged this year was fear of complete unpredictability – not only of the market, but also of algorithms, audience behaviour and the broader macroeconomic environment. Clients were faced with the feeling that every investment could become a “wrong move,” because the rules of the game were changing day by day.
Instead of reacting impulsively to every new signal, we turned that fear into a calm, rational plan for 2026 through three clear steps:
- Scenario planning – we created multiple budget scenarios to show that control and flexibility still exist.
- Always-on monitoring with real-time data, which gave clients back a sense of security and transparency in decision-making.
- Test & Learn philosophy – instead of big, risky campaigns, we focused on continuous learning through practice, which systematically reduces risk and builds trust.
In this way, panic was replaced with a proactive strategy. We enter 2026 with a clearly defined framework that doesn’t promise a stable market, but does ensure agility and confidence in decision-making.
Irena Uzunovska, Client Service Director
- Which data point in 2025 shocked you the most – not because it was unusual, but because it broke a belief the media industry held as sacred?
Reach without attention is no longer worth anything!
- What was the smartest “small optimisation” you made this year that had a bigger effect than three large, expensive plans?
The smartest “small optimisation” this year was micro-segmentation of the audience – focusing on those who truly “breathe the brand.” Instead of casting the net wide and hoping for the best, we identified a small, hyper-relevant group of users and tailored communication to them. The sense of superiority compared to “big plans” is priceless.
- If you had to choose one channel that will be the region’s “quiet winner” in 2026, which would it be – and what do others still not see?
Retail Media! While digital shouts, Retail Media whispers – but sells.
Lile Hristova, Digital Advertising Manager
- Which algorithm behaved like an “unpredictable teenager” in 2025, and how did you make it work for you anyway?
The Instagram Reels algorithm within paid placements behaved like an “unpredictable teenager.” The same creatives would achieve excellent reach and low cost per result one day, only for performance to drop sharply the next day without a clear reason. Instead of “chasing the algorithm,” we made it work for us through clear and consistent signals: strong opening messages in the first two to three seconds, modular and repeatable creative formats, and optimisation toward attention indicators (viewer retention, total watch time), which became our key indicators for sustainable campaign scaling. As a result, we achieved more stable ad delivery, more efficient budget use and significantly greater predictability of results.
- If you had to keep only one method of measuring campaign effectiveness in 2026, which would survive – and why?
If we had to keep only one method of measuring campaign effectiveness in 2026, it would be tracking direct business results. In markets like ours, where we often don’t have complete and reliable audience reach data, the most relevant indicators remain sales, number of inquiries or registrations. This approach is independent of platform metrics and directly shows whether a campaign has real impact on the business. Even without precise reach data from Google or other channels, tracking real results enables faster, safer and more rational optimisation and budget allocation decisions – without relying on complex attribution models that often confuse more than they help.
Simona Petruševska & Gabriela Kozarova – Media Planners
- Which media planning rule did you have to abandon this year because reality completely defeated it?
The annual flowchart no longer works as a fixed plan – but as a sketch that is constantly revised on the go!
This year we had to abandon the rule of long-term media campaign planning, because the market and audience behaviour were unpredictable. Instead, we moved to constant testing and learning, quick decisions and real-time adaptation.
- Which media combination did you discover completely by accident, and which turned out to be unexpectedly brilliant?
Sometimes the best solutions happen by accident. Situations in which we didn’t have large budgets motivated us to be creative and think strategically at every step. It turned out that the combination of OOH, radio and digital channels delivers outstanding reach and engagement, thanks to clearly defined roles for each medium. The result? A small campaign delivered the results of a big one, and audience reactions came faster than we expected.
Saška Tepavac, Media Buying Director
- Which negotiation sentence brought you the most value for clients in 2025, and why will you never stop using it?
“Let’s first define what success means, and only then talk about price.”
I will keep using this sentence because it shifts the focus from cost alone to real value and concrete results. It enables the creation of solutions fully tailored to client objectives, instead of generic offers, and in the long run leads to more sustainable and higher-quality results for both sides – rather than short-term compromises.
- What is the strangest but true signal about audience behaviour you saw in a campaign – a signal no one outside the buying team would even notice?
The buying team is often the first to notice small but crucial shifts in audience behaviour. For example, “unattractive” time slots, environments or small shifts in ad placement sometimes perform better than prime slots. While a campaign may still look great on paper to others, the buying team sees when less visual “clutter” means more attention, when frequency starts working against us, and when a small budget move delivers a disproportionately large effect. These are signals that don’t shout – but they are often the ones that decide the outcome of a campaign.
