Digital outdoor ads in Poland grow 27.6% as market slows

Advertising in Poland is still growing, but more slowly. Publicis Groupe Polska publishes a report twice a year, and the latest one came out on 27 August. It says the Polish advertising market grew by 5.6 percent in the first half of 2026 compared with a year earlier. That takes it to roughly 7.1 billion zloty. Almost all of the extra 376 million zloty came from digital channels.

The clearest change was outdoors. Out-of-home advertising means posters, billboards and screens in public places. Money spent on digital screens outdoors rose by 27.6 percent. That pulled the whole out-of-home category up by 6.7 percent, faster than the market as a whole.

Traditional paper posters and billboards were flat, up 0.2 percent. So the growth came from screens. Digital now makes up 28.3 percent of out-of-home money in Poland, up from 23.7 percent a year earlier. Companies such as AMS, Ströer and Clear Channel keep replacing paper sites with screens at bus stops and in shopping centres. They also sell those screens automatically, through systems that buy the space in real time. Out-of-home has 7.1 percent of the whole market, the same as radio.

Only one channel grew faster. Cinema was up 21 percent, to 110.8 million zloty, though it started from a small base. Online video rose 17 percent. Search ads on shopping sites rose 24.8 percent. Radio added 9.2 percent. Ordinary broadcast television fell 2.4 percent. It now brings in 66.1 percent of all video advertising money, down from 70.1 percent a year ago. Video of all kinds still takes 50.6 percent of every advertising zloty.

Retail is still Poland’s biggest advertising sector

The report suggests Polish budgets are following people to screens, whether in the street, in a shopping centre or on a phone. Retail is still the biggest advertising sector, with a quarter of all the money spent. Media Expert, Lidl and Kaufland lead it. Shops like ads close to the place where people buy, and that is one reason digital screens keep growing faster than the rest of outdoor advertising. Food advertisers spent 8.3 percent less, and drinks and alcohol advertisers 18.1 percent less, according to Wirtualne Media.

Growth is slowing, though. The market grew 7.1 percent in the first quarter and 4.4 percent in the second. Publicis puts that down to when Easter fell this year, and to Poland not playing in the World Cup. That quarter is usually a good one for sports advertising.

Publicis keeps its 5.8 percent forecast for the full year

Iwona Jaśkiewicz-Kundera is chief investment officer at Publicis Groupe Polska. She is keeping her forecast of 5.8 percent growth for the whole year. That means she expects a stronger second half, helped by the autumn shopping season. For outdoor advertising companies the question is capacity. Digital already carries the category. The next stage of growth may depend on putting up more screens, and on measuring audiences well enough that automated buyers can treat Polish screens like any other screen in a plan.