Ambitious AdMaster arrives in Poland
German firm AdMaster Network, an online advertising sales and marketing company, set up shop in Warsaw during the last week of July as part of its ambitious plans to establish a pan-European online advertising network in 12 countries.
"The idea is to cover as much of the European market as possible and to specialize in European customers and European online advertising," said Marcin Wozniak, managing director of AdMaster Network Poland.
Besides Germany and Poland, the Munich-based firm, which started offering services in Germany in 1998, has offices in France, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic. In Poland, AdMaster plans to spend zl. 1 million ($232,000) this year and another zl. 1 million next year on its own advertising campaign and on hiring new staff, Wozniak said. He added that the company also plans to have 15% of Poland's online advertising market by the end of 2001.
AdMaster acts as an internet advertising broker, offering web site banners as well as tailor-made online ad campaigns to media houses for their corporate clients. The firm has combined its technological and human resources with the Warsaw-based company Link System, which has provided internet-based IT solutions and online marketing and advertising in Poland since 1997. Link System holds 15% of AdMaster's operations in Poland with the German firm's parent company controlling the rest, Wozniak said. So far, AdMaster has rights to put advertisements on 25 web sites in Poland.
Unlike the handful of other online advertising agencies in Poland, AdMaster will offer its customers access to its pan-European online advertising network. The firm's extensive continent-wide advertising network may be its competitive strength, said Michal Sulkiewicz, an account executive in the interactive division of McCann Erickson Polska.
However, AdMaster will have to vie with online advertising firms as well as with Poland's portals for an already negligible amount of ad spending by corporate clients.
Online ad spending accounted for less than 1% of corporate budgets in Poland last year, Sulkiewicz said. He estimated that this year's level would be slightly higher than 1%, since most media houses will continue to spend their clients' ad budgets on the mediums that reach the widest audiences television, print, radio and billboards.
Wozniak, however, said the firm was not concerned about the small amount of ad spending that is allotted to online marketing because the market is expanding in Poland.
