Just a few years ago, an annual marketing strategy in Ukraine was a fairly stable document: a company would define its goals, budget, media mix, major campaigns, and only make targeted adjustments to individual elements throughout the year. By 2026, the very idea of planning has not disappeared, but the horizon over which businesses are willing to make irreversible decisions has fundamentally changed. The annual budget and strategy formally remain, but in parallel, far more decisions go through regular review: whether demand has held up, whether the channel works, whether its contribution to sales can be proven, and whether cost price, logistics, team availability, and energy and security conditions have changed. According to Natalia Morozova, CEO of HAVAS Village, marketing in Ukraine is increasingly operating on an efficiency-first logic: every investment must have a clear role, a measurable result, and the ability to quickly adjust its scale.
Planning Horizons Have Shrunk to a Quarter
For Ukrainian business, this behavior is logical, and the question is not why companies have become more cautious, but how to increase efficiency today without giving up growth drivers whose results will only become noticeable in a year or two. A shorter planning horizon is often explained by general «uncertainty,» but for Ukraine, this concept breaks down into very specific factors: war, staff shortages, energy risks, and significantly lower environmental predictability. In such an environment, the ability to revise a decision has economic value: the further in the future the expected return on investment lies, the more factors can alter the initial calculation. Hence the pursuit of shorter verification cycles, more flexible contracts, phased financing, and tools where results are easier to tie to business metrics.
The Numbers of Uncertainty: What Polls Say
According to the KPMG CEO Outlook 2025, 57% of Ukrainian CEOs cited geopolitical instability as a factor driving short-term decisions — compared to only 11% of global leaders. At the same time, 55% of Ukrainian respondents rated flexibility and speed of decision-making under pressure as critically important managerial competencies, and another 54% cited the ability to identify and manage risks. Ukrainian CEOs' confidence in the growth of their own companies stood at 49%, compared to 76% in 2021. A February European Business Association survey titled «Business During Wartime,» conducted among 131 top managers, confirms more cautious expectations: the share of executives with a positive assessment of their business condition fell from 40% to 32%, while negative assessments rose from 14% to 23%. Deteriorating conditions throughout 2026 were expected by 39% of respondents, up from 29% a year earlier. Nearly half — 47% — did not expect the war to end in 2026 at the time of the survey, while another 29% had no clear forecast.
Investments Continue, But the Rules Have Changed
At the same time, Ukrainian companies have not stopped investing. The EBA survey «Business Forecasts for 2026» showed that 20% of companies planned major investment projects with an average cost of about $14 million, compared to 16% and $9 million a year earlier. 77% of executives expected revenue growth in hryvnias. 74% of companies planned to use artificial intelligence to optimize or increase process efficiency — in analytics, sales, marketing, and customer communication. The market has not shifted into total austerity mode: businesses continue to invest, but requirements for every investment have tightened. Especially telling in this context is a comment from the International Marketing Initiatives Association within the All-Ukrainian Advertising Coalition's forecast for trade and consumer marketing: activity is concentrated in retail, where advertisers choose solutions with clear and predictable ROI.
Efficiency-First: What It Means in Practice
Money moves where businesses see a shorter path between investment and results, more data for evaluation, and the ability to rapidly change spending volumes. The pressure on productivity has become global, and for Ukraine, it is exacerbated by specific factors. In times of uncertainty, businesses naturally gravitate toward what can be quickly seen on a dashboard: cost per lead, sales, conversion, ROAS, repeat purchases. The logic is transparent: when a CFO needs to choose between two budget items, the one where the link to financial results looks more obvious often gets the advantage. WARC Marketer's research confirms that globally, marketing budgets are shifting toward measurable channels, and brand investments with a delayed effect become the first candidates for revision.
The Danger of the Short Horizon
The main risk of such a strategy is not that businesses lose money on «ineffective» campaigns, but that they systematically underinvest in what builds long-term brand value: awareness, loyalty, and emotional connection with the audience. The result of these investments appears in a year or two, and in a context where 47% of executives do not expect the war to end in 2026, this very horizon becomes the most vulnerable. Companies that completely abandon branding in favor of pure performance marketing risk finding themselves in a situation where, at the moment demand recovers, their brand does not occupy a place in the consumer's mind. The challenge set by Natalia Morozova is not to bring back pre-war five-year strategies, but to build a flexible model where today's efficiency does not contradict investments in tomorrow's growth.
