Like many independent media in the Western Balkans, online news portal Vijesti has fought to keep up with new and emerging trends in the digital media market. But this USAID media partner is learning how to survive in this harsh digital media market—and it shows. 

Vijesti is one of 10 regional media partners in USAID's Balkan Media Assistance Program, which is implemented in five Balkan countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Kosovo, Serbia, and Montenegro, where Vijesti is based in the capital of Podgorica.

In May 2018, two of Vijesti's editors, Filip Ivanović and Srdan Kosović, participated in the media project training, starting with how to increase audience engagement (and they were certified to train others, as well). Through that training they met Google Analytics expert Jason Lambert. Google Analytics lets you measure your advertising return on investment. After the formal training, they continued working with him to learn more about audience analytics and monetization of digital content.

As a result of the USAID-supported training and expert engagement, Vijesti quadrupled its Programmatic Sales revenue in just two months (May to July). The August financials showed a continuous upward trend in Programmatic Sales revenue, indicating that the growth and the achieved income level are sustainable.

"Working with Jason was extremely useful for Vijesti. Apart from the extensive training in Google Analytics, he helped us better understand our website traffic and … how to use those figures to monetize it,” said Srdan Kosović, Vijesti’s editor-in-chief. “Working [together] on programmatic sales increased our revenue in that department by 400 percent in just the first couple of months of our cooperation, and we expect another revenue boost when we apply all the recommendations."

Enabling and fostering such in-person collaboration to help independent media outlets resolve challenges in the digital space is a main objective of USAID’s Balkan Media Assistance Program. Most of the lessons learned and new tools applied by Vijesti are applicable to the other media partners as well.  

This success was made possible by the generous support of the American people through USAID. The content of the media partners does not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the U.S. government.