IAB AdEx 2025 Reveals a New Phase in the Development of Digital Advertising in Serbia

The digital advertising landscape in Serbia is evolving faster than ever. As consumer habits shift and digital platforms introduce more sophisticated ways to engage audiences, advertisers and agencies face a common challenge: keeping up with rapid market changes while making informed, strategic investment decisions. In a complex digital environment, understanding where budgets are moving is no longer just a technical requirement – it has become a business necessity.

Regularly analyzing market standards and benchmarks is essential for marketing professionals to strengthen their knowledge, validate their strategies, and learn how to allocate resources effectively. To address this need and provide the local advertising community with reliable, data-driven insights, the latest IAB AdEx 2025 report was officially presented at the opening of the Digital Day conference.

As an official global industry benchmark, IAB AdEx reports offer a detailed look into the dynamics, investment structures, and key trends shaping domestic digital markets. For digital advertisers, agency leaders, and in-house marketing teams, these results provide more than just statistics – they offer a strategic roadmap for navigating the evolving advertising landscape.

From Numbers to Strategy: A Market on the Rise

The findings of the IAB AdEx 2025 report demonstrate that the demand for structured, business-focused digital advertising remains incredibly strong. According to the official data, the total value of investments in digital advertising on the Serbian market in 2025 reached €168.92 million. This represents an exceptional double-digit growth of 28% compared to the previous year, highlighting the growing confidence businesses place in digital channels to drive real business outcomes.

Throughout the past year, the investment structure across key segments revealed a clear picture of how advertisers are prioritizing their budgets:

• Display Advertising
  Display Advertising continues to be the dominant segment of the market, reaching a value of €115.2 million. This reflects an impressive growth of 35% year-over-year. Display formats, which encompass social media and video, now make up as much as 68% of the total digital investments in Serbia.

• Paid Search (SEM)
  Recorded a total value of €31.8 million, achieving stable growth of 17%. This segment remains a fundamental pillar of performance-driven strategies, occupying a 19% share of the total digital investment budget.

• Classifieds and Directories
  Reached a value of €14 million, showing a more moderate and mature growth of 3.7%.

Understanding the Shift to Mobile and Video Formats

A central theme of the 2025 market analysis is the way advertisers are aligning their budgets with actual user behavior. The data clearly indicates a strong preference for communication channels that offer higher engagement and direct connection with consumers.

The Domination of Mobile Ad Spend

Estimated investments in mobile advertising reached €125.83 million in 2025. What particularly emphasizes the strategic importance of this channel is that mobile formats have achieved a staggering 90% share within the entire Display spend segment. For modern marketers, mobile optimization is no longer an optional tactic; it is the core foundation of campaign planning.

The Sustained Growth of Online Video

Online video formats continue to attract significant budgets as brands prioritize visual storytelling. In 2025, investments in online video amounted to €30.04 million, marking a 17.6% increase compared to the previous year. Within the Display segment, video formats now maintain a stable 26% share, proving their value in building deeper audience connections and driving full-funnel marketing results.

Navigating the Paid Social Ecosystem: Market Power and Emerging Channels

Investments in the social media segment recorded the highest growth rate among the main digital channels, with an increase in investments of 28.8%. Today, social networks account for a substantial 35.5% share of the overall digital investment structure in Serbia.

Within this highly competitive paid social ecosystem, the power dynamics between global platforms highlight both stability and new areas of exploration:

• Meta recorded growth of 27% and comfortably maintains its position as the largest social media advertising platform in Serbia. Meta represents as much as 89.5% of the total paid social segment, remaining the primary foundation for broad reach and scalable performance.

• TikTok stood out as the most significant emerging channel, achieving an incredible percentage growth of 303% in 2025. While this massive percentage uplift is explained by the platform’s late entry into the market with little to no initial investment, it signals a clear shift in advertiser interest. Despite this rapid rise, its final share in the total market spend remains small, sitting at less than 2%.

Programmatic Integration, SEO Adjustments, and New Disciplines

Beyond global tech ecosystems, the IAB AdEx 2025 report brings crucial insights into the performance of local media and specific marketing disciplines, helping professionals see how individual tactics work together as part of a broader strategy:

• Local Display
  Registered growth of 7%. Crucially, these results reflect not only direct space buying but also the increasing role of programmatic buys. The integration of data-driven programmatic technology helped drive this growth, moving the segment forward compared to the modest 1% recorded in the previous period.

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
  Recorded growth of 15%. However, compared to previous periods, the segment experienced a slowdown in year-over-year dynamics, dropping by 10 percentage points. This trend reflects global shifts in how search ecosystems are evolving.

• Influencer Marketing
  Maintained a stable but more moderate growth of 8%, showing that content creator partnerships are becoming a structured, standard component of the marketing mix.

• Retail Media
  Channels within retail networks are showing a clear upward trend and are on the rise. While this space is highly anticipated, its participation at the level of total digital advertising in Serbia is still in an early stage, currently sitting below 1% of total spend.

Looking Ahead: A Vision for Long-Term Market Growth

The IAB AdEx 2025 report demonstrates that while the Serbian digital advertising market shows strong internal dynamics and an impressive 28% growth rate, a comparison with the wider European context indicates massive room for future development.

In 2025, the digital ad spend per capita in Serbia was €25. When compared to the European average of €250 per capita, a significant difference in investment volume becomes visible.

Rather than a limitation, this gap represents a major opportunity. It shows that the domestic market has a long runway for expansion, budget increases, and digital maturity. As businesses continue to connect digital advertising with concrete business outcomes, the potential for growth remains higher than ever.

Access the Complete Data

This report marks the completion of one digital year, but it is far from the end of the market’s evolution. Continuous learning and data-driven planning are becoming increasingly important for the long-term success of advertisers and agencies alike.

The complete data, detailed analytics, and official presentation of the IAB AdEx 2025 report will be publicly available after the conclusion of the official program at the Digital Day conference. All interested advertisers, agencies, and industry professionals looking to bring greater clarity, structure, and confidence to their strategic planning can download the official presentation and statistics directly from the official website of the IAB Serbia association.