SOFIA (Bulgaria), October 24 (SeeNews) – Net investments in digital advertising in Bulgaria grew by close to 37.9% year-on-year to 198.9 million levs ($100.1 million/101.7 million euro) in 2021, Interactive Advertising Bureau Bulgaria (IAB Bulgaria), the local unit of digital business industry association IAB, said.
The strong performance of the sector is above the average increase in Europe of 30.5% to a total 92 billion euro ($ billion) and puts Bulgaria in the top five fastest-growing EU digital markets last year, IAB Bulgaria said in its most recent AdEx digital advertising expenditure study published last week.
Digital advertising in Bulgaria has thus increased at the sharpest annual rate since the start of the AdEx study in 2010.
Local publishers attracted advertising investments of 55 million levs in 2021, which represented an an annual jump of 33.6%.
With 69%, the display advertising segment held the largest market share in Bulgaria last year despite a year-on-year decrease of 2 percentage points (pp). The display category added 34.8% on the year to 137.5 million levs.
Having risen by a quarter, video advertising commands 43% of display.
Social media has grown its share of display advertising by 5 pp since 2020 and now represents a 43% share, which is below the European average.
Automation and programmatic solutions attracted the largest percentage of digital advertising investments last year, or 78%, while talent and influencer marketing recorded the biggest jump, or 142.8%.
The study was jointly conducted with market research company IPSOS Bulgaria.
The IAB Europe AdEx Benchmark study monitors market size and value for 28 countries: Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK and Ukraine.
Below is a summary of the value and change in digital advertising categories in Bulgaria.
| 2020 (mln levs) | 2021 (mln levs) | change y/y | |
| Display | 102.0 | 137.5 | 34.8% |
| Search | 33.9 | 46.4 | 36.9% |
| Native & PR | 4.3 | 5.9 | 39.7% |
| Talent & influencer | 2.5 | 6.1 | 142.8% |
| Other | 1.6 | 3.0 | 92.0% |
| Total | 144.2 | 198.9 | 37.4% |
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)
