{"id":13977,"date":"2025-09-03T15:40:18","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T12:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/media-azi.md\/bugete-si-audiente-in-scadere-ce-dificultati-urmeaza-pentru-piata-media-din-moldova-si-cum-le-putem-depasi\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T16:51:59","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T13:51:59","slug":"bugete-si-audiente-in-scadere-ce-dificultati-urmeaza-pentru-piata-media-din-moldova-si-cum-le-putem-depasi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/media-azi.md\/en\/bugete-si-audiente-in-scadere-ce-dificultati-urmeaza-pentru-piata-media-din-moldova-si-cum-le-putem-depasi\/","title":{"rendered":"Decreasing budgets and audiences. What difficulties lie ahead for the Moldovan media market and how can they be addressed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alexandru Lebedev, media expert<\/strong><\/p>\n

The media ecosystem in the Republic of Moldova is very fragile, being influenced by any major or minor crisis, and the advertising market reflects this reality. In 2024, the Moldovan advertising market amounted to \u20ac 26.27 million, i.e. an increase of almost 28% compared to 2022, when the Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine caused a major decline, but also compared to 2024, when it was at the level of 2013-2014. The gradual growth in recent years was driven by improvements of the environment: controlled inflation, increasing the average salary in the economy, and also the expansion of the retail market. Of the total market, 50% of funds were allocated to television, 39% \u2013 to online media, 7% \u2013 to outdoor advertising, 3% \u2013 to radio and 1% \u2013 to print media.<\/p>\n

Although 2025 was expected to bring a 12% increase compared to 2024, this scenario is becoming increasingly unlikely. Rising inflation, withdrawal of USAID funding from Moldova and uncertainties surrounding the parliamentary elections in September will seriously affect media outlets.<\/p>\n

This is the general picture. But let’s look into details to understand where the problems lie.<\/p>\n

PROBLEM 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

Television is a premium advertising medium, meaning that those who decide to advertise on TV still need to have budgets for creativity, production and in-depth market research. The problem lies in the difficulty of effectively targeting the audience for commercials, product placements or sponsorship of shows. The measurement that we have always had on the market (the AGB Nielsen company) is considered unrepresentative and has been criticized several times over the years, while the alternative selected through a tender some time ago (Kantar Media) cannot be implemented, because the market cannot afford it. Additionally, cable operators (Orange, StarNet, Moldtelecom) seem to be able to provide more accurate data on the audience, but this information is not public or the cable operators do not yet collect it so accurately.<\/p>\n

As a result, large clients \u00a0(most of them international) are willing to pay for advertising only for urban audiences aged 18+. Also, due to the recent economic stagnation, budgets are decreasing, and several clients decide not to work with all TV advertising sales houses, aiming instead to optimize spending and impact.<\/p>\n

None of the local channels are included in the AGB Nielsen measurement system, which limits their access to major clients, while national television stations (all based in Chisinau) compete for the available audiovisual budgets. Outside Chisinau, monetization remains almost impossible. Moreover, Moldova has previously faced issues with monopolies in the TV market, and the limited budgets substantially favour creation of an environment in which this problem would reappear, which would lead to a decrease in the price of advertising, something already visible in data from the first half of 2025. This would create more gaps in television budgets.<\/p>\n

Also, if we monitor the market for the last five years, the digital\/online sector has been steadily growing. Funds that were previously intended for TV advertising are now increasingly spent on social networks, influencers, and programmatic advertising (the automatic buying and selling of banner ads or video placements). This shift is driven by more effective audience targeting, lower production costs (including by using AI tools), and also have much more complex and relevant demographic statistical data. While this might seem like good news for Moldova\u2019s online media, it is not: most of the money goes to global platforms rather than to editorial offices in the country.<\/p>\n

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A real and efficient collaboration between television channels and TV service distributors, to use data in the common interest and to offer advertising clients a much more accurate audience targeting, could be an effective step and would motivate companies to allocate larger budgets for TV advertising, knowing that they can access any TV set, but not to general statistical data. This could also increase the price of advertising, because it would be justified. By the way, regional channels could also participate in this market.<\/p>\n

In addition, better collaboration between television channels is necessary to better control market prices, preventing dumping, destabilization or concentration of audiences within one or two sales houses.<\/p>\n

However, political involvement (both in TV ownership and TV distribution services) makes such collaboration difficult and not always fair. The lack of trust among market players leads to each to act independently, without contributing to the overall development of the market. In this context, another solution would be the development of Smart TV applications for television channels, which could help customers reach the necessary audience, but these require large budgets for development and maintenance \u2013 funds that television channels cannot invest without a growing national economic environment.<\/p>\n

PROBLEM 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

The classic model of online media \u2013 attracting traffic to the website and selling audience reach \u2013 no longer works. It worked as long as Google was just Google, and social networks were few and not overcrowded with content creators. But things changed with the easy access to AI, audience segmentation on different social networks, and the constant evolution of social media algorithms.<\/p>\n

Thus, now the landscape looks like this:<\/p>\n