The CEE Marketing Spend Forecast 2021 – Admixer Survey

In September, the independent adtech company, Admixer, surveyed 43 brands and 50 advertising agencies from Central and Eastern Europe to understand how they will shape their growth strategies and spend on marketing in 2021. The CEE Marketing Forecast 2021 was aiming to gather the predictions for the future state of marketing from CMOs, digital executives, and marketers. Admixer shares the key findings and forecasts from the survey.

The results of the research reveal that 81% of brands and 74% of ad agencies expect their business to grow in 2021, which is quite optimistic. 65% of surveyed brands believe that their marketing budgets will increase next year compared with 2020.

However, agencies are slightly more cautious in their forecasts. While 58% of agencies believe that the situation will improve and clients will be more willing to invest in marketing activities, 20% of ad agencies don’t expect any major budget changes, and 22% of them predict that the budgets will decline.

Another interesting discovery is that 51% of brands are going to allocate roughly the same budgets for agency services in 2021. 30% of brands are going to increase the use of agency services, while 19% are planning to cut agency budgets.

Next year most businesses are going to be fairly conservative in their strategies. 76% of the brands surveyed will focus on the existing markets while only 19% are going to expand their business to new markets. 

Amid the adverse effects of the 2020 crisis, 86% of brands say they are going to move some of their marketing activities in-house. This applies to SMM (67%), creative production, content marketing (65%), and PR (63%). The biggest budget reductions are expected in event marketing (19%) and offline advertising (18%).

The survey results indicate a gradual transition to programmatic buying methods. 63% of brands and 72% of agencies expect more ad-buying deals to be traded programmatically. In the meantime, direct deals with publishers and desktop campaigns continue to lose popularity.

Stanislav Shyshkin, Head of Research Group and Head of Content at Admixer:

The survey reveals that brands and advertising agencies are optimistic as to how the situation will develop in 2021. Although 86% of respondents believe that the pandemic will continue to influence marketing in the coming year, they still expect their businesses to grow. The majority of executives surveyed are expecting marketing budget growth and increasing investments in paid channels of acquisition

In general, over 50% of respondents are planning to increase marketing budgets in 2021.

Download the full CEE Marketing Forecast 2021 to discover more findings on how brands and advertising agencies are going to distribute marketing budgets next year.

Admixer is an independent adtech company that provides full-stack programmatic solutions for buy- and sell-side market players. Since 2008, the company has been developing an ecosystem of interconnected products to meet the needs of brands, ad agencies, media houses, publishers, ad networks, and other industry players. Admixer has over 100 supply and demand partners, 3,000+ clients, and 200+ employees worldwide