About the author:

Milos Petrovic is a respected Serbian blogger with an Engeneering Degree in Organizational Science. He is founder of the webportal of the city of Bor, has participated as a teaching aide at the School of Organizational Science of the University of Belgrade, and worked for Trident Media Group and Tritech, among other endeavours.

Disclaimer: The following is a summarized and translated version of Mr. Petrovic’s original post on MilosBlog.com and does not necessarilly reflect the views and opinions of Serbia Today or its partners.

The begining of the year has definitely been reserved for the review of Internet advertising in Serbia. According to all announcements, the presentation structure and “sold out tickets”, the event was a promising one and, finally, did meet expectations. The current state of matters was well demonstarted and some interesting pointers were given as to the further development of on-line advertising. Our last impression was that we all believe in a better today and that the cult of “B92-Blic” advertising should be broken.

On January 2010, at Hotel Zira in Belgrade, a one-day seminar was held, titled “Advertising on the Interent” and organized by ABC Serbia. An excellent space, very high quality audience, plenty of familliar faces from the profession, good food and beverage, excellent socializing.

Courtesy of: milosblog.com

Nebojsa Radovic, a.k.a. Eniac - Presented types of on-line advertising, paying close attention to niche specific sites and reminding that the “large” sites aren’t the only available advertising space.

Jovan Protic, Director of Ringier online and publisher of “24 hours” - Presented statistics and analysis of the on-line audience in Serbia. Mr. Protic emphasized the readiness of audiences to accept advertisements located on mainstream media websites, which seemed like an undermining of websites that don’t fall within the mainstream media créme. He also noted that every advertising campaign should be tried and evaluated after 7 days, to monitor its effect and be able to react to that appropriately. Wise, I’d say.

Rade Trickovic, a well known figure from HTTPoll - Spoke of advertising through content brokers and other agents. Mr. Trickovic listed many advantages to using professional agecies who deal in Internet advertising. Is Internet advertising in a state of crisis in Serbia? The fact that only some 3% of the cake goes to on-line advertising speaks volumes to that effect, but the amount of clients HTTPoll has had in the past year, numbering over 400, claims to the contrary. I prefer to let others analyse whether HTTPoll is taking a big bite out of the Internet advertising cake.

Dejan Bizinger, Business Development Manager - Mr. Bizinger first reacted from the audience to Mr. Trickovic’s presentation, bringing to attention the well known fact that the majority of funds for on-line advertising in Serbia are directed to B92 and Blic. I got the impression that this didn’t agree with many in the audience, and with good reason. There certainly is a  “B92-Blic” cult in Internet advertising and that isn’t at all good for our Internet scene. Somehow, i believe that cult will come to an end.

Bizinger later took to the stage and presented on the subject of advertising on social media, presenting this most interesting form of on-line advertising. New concepts like Check-in and Groupon systems are entirely innovative for our region, but their implementation should be expected. During his presentation, Dejan mentioned people who handle social media accounts for corporate purposes and called them Social Media Officers, which probably makes more sense than the usual Social Media Expert title that has been getting negative attention on local blogs recently.

Mladen Malik, Owner and CEO of eZadar.hr - Mladen, who is entirely transparent by character and one to speak his mind, spoke of eZadar.hr’s success. He had plenty to boast of. The numbers were what was most interesting as eZadar.hr rolled in an impressive revenue of €150,000 in 2009! Annual contracts with companies and entrepreneurs from Zadar, affilliate agencies, and other forms of advertisement, gave eZadar a near 300% rise in profit in comparisson to 2008. Aside from busting the myth of 2009 having been a year of crisis, Mladen also demonstrated that Croatia is a step ahead of Serbia in Internet advertising. A great promotional example for the city of Zadar! I was left under the impression that Mladen had a highly successful strategy as to on-line advertising. Regular rounds of local businesses, ads on different portions of the site, sponsored polls, curreny exchange lists… all advertising tools were employed for the monetization of eZadar.hr. Food for thought.

Finally, my complaint that advertising through articles wasn’t a subject. Blogs, PR texts, product analyses, tests, reviews, etc, can represent a powerful weapon in on-line advertising. A text with well done SEO can be worth more than a banner campaign. Such campaigns may not have a bombastic effect short-term, but can mean quite a lot long-term.

In conclusion, notes from the seminar:

-TV audiences are migrating to the Internet
- On-line advertising – “try being smart”
- Pay per view, click, action
- Socio-demographic research is desirable
- Banners – creativity is key to success
- Flash Banners – more creative. More work for flash programmers
- E-commerce and affiliate platforms – the outstretched arm of Internet advertising
- Campaigns – plan, implementation, testing, adaptation, monitoring, evaluation.
- Combinations are key – print or TV plus Internet advertising
- Targetting – every niche deserves attention
- Breaking of the “B92-Blic” cult of Internet advertising
- Social networks are the pillars of innovative advertising
- With a good strategy even local sites can turn a profit