Hungarian Advertising Association: solid growth in 2025, but still lagging behind 2019

Péter Novák, President of the Hungarian Advertising Association, summarized the most important conclusions of the Advertising Association as follows:

“Although the stagnant economic environment and the below-expected GDP growth in 2025 (+0.3%) did not provide a supportive environment for the development of the communications sector last year, the slight increase in household consumption had a positive impact on the economic performance of the industry. In 2025, advertisers’ total communications spending grew above inflation (+6.2%), but in real terms it still did not reach the 2019 level of spending (-4.5%). The lion’s share of last year’s growth was still achieved by investments in the private sector: this was the main engine of the advertising market. fuel. However, the higher (+8.7%) annual advertising revenue growth in the media sector is deceptive, because the increase in media prices also contributed to the expansion of the market in the previous year, and the lead-up to the 2026 elections has already had a noticeable impact on certain media types. The change in domestic media advertising revenue (+6.8%) continues to lag behind the expansion of the entire media pie by 1.6 percentage points, and in real terms it is still 10% below the level in 2019.”

Regarding the performance of the communication sectors, he added:

“The growth rate of non-media3 sectors began to slow down in 2025. Their performance changed below inflation (+3.7%), which is compared to the 7.6% expansion in 2024, and below the average growth of the past 5 years (2020-2024) (+8%). Thus, non-media spending in real terms is still well below the 2019 level, by 11.7%.

The President of the MRSZ, responding to the market developments of recent years, also emphasized: “The years following 2019, dotted with crises, were extremely hectic for the advertising industry. In addition to global industry trends, the domestic economic environment also posed a difficult path, while market players also began to face the challenges of artificial intelligence.”

 The size of the 2025 MRSZ Media Pie: 415.9 billion forints

In 2025, the media types grew by a total of 32.3 billion forints in advertising revenue. Without exception, all of them grew, to different degrees within a scale of 1.9-11.2. Three media types grew at an outstanding rate, over 10% nominally: digital (+11.2%), public space (+11.3%) and radio (+10.8%). It is encouraging that last year’s nominal growth (+8.7%) is higher than the average of the past 25 years (5.8%), although within the entire media pie, local media growth still lags behind the expansion of the entire media pie by 1.6 percentage points. After extremely volatile years starting in 2020, the figures for 2024 and 2025 already show the stabilization of the market.

Change of place in the order of media types: public space overtook the press. For the first time in many years, there is a change in the order of media types. In 2025, public space and press changed places: public space media moved up to 4th place, while the press slipped back to 5th place despite last year’s growth. Public space takes up a small, but 0.2%, larger share of the pie compared to the press. The new order of media types in 2025 is: (1) global digital platforms, (2) television, (3) domestic digital media, (4) public space, (5) press, (6) radio, (7) cinema.

Global players are still growing the fastest, although the rate is no longer as high as it was years ago, but it still exceeds that of domestic players: in 2025, almost half (48%) of the total market expansion was realized by them. The advertising spending of local (domestic) digital content providers represents 19.6% of the total media pie, while in digital it represents 35%. (The growth of the domestic players’ reach within digital was influenced by the influencer marketing data included from 2023, and the number was supplemented with digital retail media data from 2024.) More than a third, 36.1%, of the total media spending was realized by global players, while its proportion within digital advertising spending is 65%.

The radio and public space markets are growing steadily. Public space and radio have been growing continuously for years, with radio growing by over 10 percentage points every year since 2022. The outdoor market had a truly successful year in 2025, as it made a historic leap forward in media history: the media swapped places with the press in the pie. The market grew to HUF 37.3 billion.