What lies ahead for Türkiye’s media ecosystem?

In brief

• Media investment in Türkiye is expected to reach around TRY 90 billion in 2023.
• Taken together, linear TV, VOD and digital out-of-home screens account for 49% of media investment.
• Media investment is around 0.4% of GDP, pointing to roughly 2.5x growth potential.

Media investment reached around TRY 37 billion in the first half of 2023, and we expect it to reach around TRY 90 billion by year-end. What lies ahead for Türkiye’s fast-growing media ecosystem can be summed up in five themes.

1. The media ecosystem is becoming increasingly fragmented

It will become ever harder for brands to optimise their media investment to capture consumer attention. In 2024, marketers will keep increasing investment in online video, social media and mobile while continuing to cut back on traditional channels.

But as investment in digital channels grows, the weaknesses in digital targeting caused by data privacy and the disappearance of third-party cookies will move further up the agenda. As a result, brands will have to keep pace with evolving and increasingly complex measurement approaches (such as econometric modelling/MMM and attribution modelling) to track the return on their media investment.

2. Privacy rules and the cookieless era are making digital targeting harder

In 2024, building and enriching first-party data will be the main agenda item for brands, while data partnership opportunities in retail media will be discussed more. In this context, brands’ first-party data, together with retail media data that best signals purchase intent, will be critical to acquiring and retaining customers.

3. Screen viewing habits are steering cross-screen investment

Average viewing time on linear TV doesn’t change much year to year, but remains high at 5.5 hours a day. Online TV and streaming viewing time has approached 2 hours. In 2024 we will talk more about connected TV, VOD and OTT, and focus on making advertising and media strategies on these platforms more connected with other communication channels.

4. Media investment is really growing through cross-screen advertising

In the first half of 2023, TV took 26% of media investment and digital 66%. Looking at that split, we might say digital dominates. But when we add up investment in screens (linear TV + VOD + digital out-of-home), screens account for 49%. Screens will continue to hold a significant share of media investment.

5. Despite rapid growth, the share of GDP is still low

Although advertising and media investment has grown fast (90% in 2022, 79% in the first half of 2023), media investment amounts to only around 0.4% of gross domestic product. That suggests growth potential of roughly 2.5 times. Over the past five and a half years (2018 to H1 2023), advertising and media investment contributed an average of 6.34% to GDP. Advertising and media investment will continue to grow in 2024.