The communications industry finally started growing in real terms in 2024

Péter Novák, President of the Hungarian Advertising Association, summarized the most important conclusions of the Advertising Association regarding the market figures:

“Overall, it can be said that in 2024 the communications profession finally set itself on a real growth path compared to 2019. Primarily, the communication expenditures of the competitive sector induced the expansion of the market. After the extremely volatile period that began in 2020, the past year was characterized by stable growth. Although 2024 was also atypical – since it is not typical for our industry to be able to expand in an economy close to stagnation – this is what happened last year (+7.6%).”

Regarding media market processes, he highlighted:

“Media spending continued to decline in real terms in the two years following the rebound in 2021, so the market was relieved that in 2024 it finally exceeded 2019 by 4.5% in real terms, and the combined performance of the communication industry sectors also grew by 3.9% in real terms last year. The market’s confidence is also shown by the fact that, according to the forecast of respondents to the recently conducted 7th MRSZ Barometer survey, a similar increase of over 8% is expected in media advertising spending in 2025, and growth of over 4% in other communication industry sectors.”

In contrast to all this, looking back at the market figures of a quarter of a century, he also emphasized:

“In 25 years, the ratio of media spending to GDP in Hungary has decreased drastically, by 43 percentage points. The domestic figure of 0.47% is also extremely low in relation to international data, given that the international average in 2024 was 0.99% and although the media spending/GDP indicator decreased worldwide, in our country it decreased much more than the international average.”

The size of the MRSZ Media Cake in 2024 is 384.4 billion forints

The media types increased their advertising revenue by 27.3 billion forints compared to 2023, which represents a change of +7.6%. The growth in advertising revenue in domestic media (+5.4%) lags behind the growth in the entire media cake. With the exception of the press, all media types – radio and cinema – were able to increase their advertising revenue to an outstanding extent.