Outdoor advertising segment grew by 25-30% in the first half of the year

The Russian outdoor advertising market in the first half of the year grew by 25-30%, to 22-23 billion rubles, according to All-billboards. Yandex remained the leader in purchases, while the top 10 included Tasty – and that’s it, MuzTV and Fonbet. New advertisers, market participants explain, have been attracted by improved audience measurements and performance metrics. Analysts believe that the banking sector, e-commerce and developers will actively purchase outdoor advertising in the near future.

“Kommersant” got acquainted with the data of the all-Russian service for booking outdoor advertising All-billboards on the results of the first half of the year. They follow that the Russian outdoor advertising market has grown by 25-30%, to 22-23 billion rubles. Excluding Moscow, the Moscow region and St. Petersburg, it amounted to 9-12 billion rubles. It is specified that about 50% of all outdoor advertising budgets fall on Moscow and the Moscow Region, 11-12% – on St. Petersburg, and 38-39% – on other regions.

The share of digital surfaces (screens of various types) this year in the cost of Russian advertisers for outdoor advertising exceeded 50%, according to All-billboards data: “In Moscow it reached 70%, in St. 40%”. So, at the beginning of the second quarter, there were more than 10 thousand digital surfaces in Moscow, more than 5 thousand in St. Petersburg, and more than 20 thousand in other cities.

According to All-billboards, Yandex became the leader in purchases in the first half of the year. Earlier, Admetrix, a supplier of outdoor advertising market monitoring data, reported that the company for the first time became the leader in outdoor advertising purchases back in 2022 (see Kommersant dated February 7). Second place, according to All-billboards, was taken by Sberbank, displacing VTB, which closed the top three. Among the newcomers in the top 10 are Tasty – and that’s it, MuzTV, Fonbet. The last line was occupied by MTS.

According to the results of the first half of the year, Avito, LSR Group, Tele2, Lenta and M.Video fell out of the top ten. Yandex and Ozon declined to comment. VTB and Sberbank did not respond.

According to Russ Group, the growth of the outdoor advertising market as a whole in the first half of the year exceeded 20%, and for digital outdoor advertising – 65%. The main reasons were internal changes in the industry, says Boris Peshnyak, commercial director of the company: “The investments that we have made over the past years guarantee full transparency of our activities, we are talking about improving audience measurements and introducing performance measurements.” These mechanisms, according to the top manager, led to an increase in the number of new brands that “were able to evaluate the effect of outdoor advertising.”

NMi Group assesses the growth of the outdoor advertising market in the first half of the year more modestly – within 10-15%. The growth is associated with the entry of new advertisers into the market, for example, Asian automobile brands, for which outdoor advertising has always been a classic channel, says Dmitry Vinogradov, purchasing director of the holding: “Inflation and partial media monopolization could also affect the growth of the segment.”

In terms of the pace of digitalization, domestic outdoor advertising is one of the world leaders, ahead of, for example, the United States and almost all European countries with the exception of the UK, where the share of DOOH (Digital Out of Home – digital outdoor advertising) in 2022 was 62%, says the CEO of All -billboards Andrey Baiduzhiy: “According to the World Outdoor Advertising Organization (WOO), the average global share of digital outdoor advertising is now only 37%, and it will reach the level of 50% already passed in Russia only in 2026.”

Now the intensity and activity of investments in outdoor advertising has changed, banks and e-commerce are taking the lead, says Mikhail Burmistrov, head of Infoline Analytics. However, he admits that construction companies, faced with rising volumes of unsold housing, may also begin to increase the cost of outdoor advertising: “However, this will not happen in the third quarter, when demand will already be warmed up in anticipation of tightening conditions for issuing mortgage loans.”

Yulia Yurasova, Timofey Kornev