The largest and most significant regional conference on digital and interactive marketing was held at the Yugoslav Drama Theater in Belgrade a couple of days ago, under the slogan New Signal. Digital Day Conference provided the stage for sharing the experiences of current industrial trends in the world, by marketing and digital media experts, strategists, decision makers, creative minds, visionaries, tech geeks…
At the opening of the conference, Igor Žeželj, CEO of Wireless Media and Chairman of the Board of IAB Serbia, said that it is now of utmost importance to make a cross section that would show the state of digital in Serbia, and pointed out that Belgrade has recognized the importance of the Digital Day Conference. “I think this partnership allows us to place Digital Day in the next few years as a must-visit digital event on the map of this part of Europe. Through this partnership, we have succeeded in immersing Digital Day into the digitization in culture, which is of crucial importance to us all,” Žeželj said.
In addition to a series of interesting lectures focusing on current events and trends in the industry, with lecturers from some of the world’s largest companies and media including Google, VICE Media, Digiday and others, participants had the opportunity to listen to several panel discussions that focused on e-commerce, business transformation, digitization in culture, the introduction of GDPR, how to build a community and make the perfect media mix, the future of the media, and so on.
At the conference, Rade Tričković, Managing Director at Httpool, presented the results of ADEX research on digital adspend in Serbia, noting that digital adspend in 2017 amounted to €29.5 million. “This shows a wonderful progress, it shows the growth of online advertising market of 25% year on year,” he said, noting that Serbia is still far from the European average. When it comes to types of ads, display holds the highest share(26%) followed by search (22%) and classifieds with 19%, ie over three million euros.
Tričković noted that mobile traffic in Serbia is significantly increasing. Video, mobile advertising, and social advertising are still the drivers of market growth. Compared to the previous year, Mobile recorded a growth of 98% and its market share stood at 12.99 million euros. While video commands a 44% share in the total value of online advertising.
The conference was closed by the Executive Director of IAB Serbia, Danka Trbojević. Aside from the fact that the conference program was held simultaneously in two halls this year, this was the first two-day Digital Day, and at the end of the second day the most successful digital campaigns and projects in last year were awarded the Mixx Awards, more on which you can read in a separate article.
