24sata reinvents as Croatia’s top media company

JoomBoos, owned by Croatia’s top media outlet 24sata, is the country’s most-watched YouTube channel catering to Generations Z and Alpha. Matej Lončarić, Director of Video Operations and media brands JoomBoos & miss7, explained how JoomBoos has monetised its videos and adopted linear TV’s ad metrics to grow its revenues by 35 percent in a year. When 24sata’s cable news business shut down in 2015, the company was left with just two people in the video department. Undeterred, the lean team found success live-streaming breaking news events on social media, developing an audience that was almost entirely composed of Generation Z viewers.

The success indicated a social media audience eager for digital content. So when 24sata’s parent company Styria Media Group hosted an innovation incubator, Lončarić pitched the idea for a YouTube channel. Six years later, the channel, called JoomBoos, is the most powerful media brand for Generation Z and Generation Alpha viewers in the Adriatic region. JoomBoos boasts more than 20 million video views a month across six platforms and has 1 million subscribers amongst Croatia’s 4 million people.