Central Europe has yet to fully embrace digital advertising within television, with ads tiers are not always available, but YouTube Premium is the third most popular platform.
According to Maria Rua Aguete, Executive Director, Technology Fellow, Omdia there is not one local player who can be seen to be the leader across the region. So the number one player in Eastern Europe is Netflix, followed by Disney, with HBO Max in fourth place.
Rua Aguete told NEM Dubrovnik that while in the rest of the world linear and pay-TV was decreasing, in Central Europe it was increasing. Revenues from Connected TV are also low and those that are coming in are headed in the direction of Google and sister company YouTube. “In the rest of the world, 23% of revenues in the TV set are already digital and connected to revenues. But look at this region, only 3%.”
In 2019, YouTube’s penetration on smart TV it was only 45%, now the figure is 52. Netflix’s penetration on TV remains at 86%, with just 37% watching on mobile. “So Netflix wants to increase their percentage on the mobile and YouTube want to be more and more on the TVs.”
Inga Alika, Founder and CEO, Alika Media and Tech, said it was hard to convince boardrooms in the region that streaming and online video was an option when ARPU remained stable. “Why should you disrupt yourself?” she asked. “But Baltics are different… OTT streamings overtook already traditional pay-TV streamings in 2024 and majority of Baltic subscriptions are coming from local players.
Recent data from Latvia showed viewership of connected TV was now at 61% because the majority of homes now had a connected TV set.
Lucyna Koba, Audience Measurement Market Leader, Poland, Nielsen Media questioned the rules of engagement. If YouTube is TV, let’s start from the basics. What is a TV definition? Yeah, and in my opinion the definition of the TV is the mainly professional produced content, no matter where it is watched. Finally, this is watched on mobile, on TV screen. But this is the professional produced content. Is not YouTube’s case. The YouTube I would say rather is a distributor. The kind of distributor for professional and unprofessional producers.”
Michal Stefanski, Head of Partnerships CEE, Google disagreed: “YouTube is definitely professionalising because there’s just so much content available in general… in order to actually catch those eyeballs, catch the attention of users, you need to start making better content and also deliver this content on the platforms where the users want to want to watch it.”
Stefanski said it was video that was behind the increase of online revenues in Western Europe, the data in Eastern territories still too low to make them relevant. “Nowadays you see broadcasters cannot afford not to have digital assets in they need to own digital assets basically to capture this opportunity,” he said.
Denis Oštir is the Editor-In-Chief at VIDAA, a leading Smart TV platform that powers over 40 million devices globally also took issue with the direction of the discussion. “I think the problem that we have in this industry, everybody wants to be everything. Like, the telcos want to be content creators, they want to be content producers, they want to be ad servers, they want to be hardware manufacturers. Everybody wants to be everything. And it doesn’t make any sense.
“We decided we want to have an answer, but then we said, oh my God, we’re fighting with the same partners that are already on our platform. The problem is it conflates the space, it becomes too crowded, it becomes too expensive, and the most important thing, in the end, the customers get the correct experience.”
