About HORIZONT

HORIZONT

HORIZONT is the leading German trade publication for marketing, advertising, and media, published by the dfv Mediengruppe (Deutscher Fachverlag) in Frankfurt am Main. Since its first issue on 5 September 1983, the magazine has been the industry's forum: debate-oriented, opinionated, and background-rich, it reports on the full spectrum of marketing communication and remains the publication that Germany's advertising professionals read to understand their own business. Published bi-weekly since January 2022 after decades as a weekly newspaper, HORIZONT combines the print magazine with the high-reach website horizont.net, the HORIZONTJobs career market, and the industry's most prestigious and influential awards.

Overview

HORIZONT addresses the decision-makers of the marketing, advertising, and media industries: marketing managers at advertisers, agency executives, media planners, and media owners. The readership is a highly attractive multiplier target group: marketing and media decision-makers who also privately maintain a brand-conscious lifestyle. The editorial concept is debate-oriented and opinionated: HORIZONT does not merely report the industry's news but stages its debates, takes positions, and provides the background that explains what the news means.

The publication rhythm changed in January 2022: after nearly four decades as a weekly newspaper appearing on Thursdays, HORIZONT became a bi-weekly magazine. The change reflected the industry's digital transformation: the daily news moved to horizont.net, while the print product focused on background, analysis, and the magazine experience. The bi-weekly rhythm gives the editorial team the time for the in-depth reporting that distinguishes the print product from the website's daily flow. The digital subscription includes full access to HORIZONT Online, the e-paper of the newspaper and magazines, and the online print archive.

The German Advertising Industry

HORIZONT serves an industry that has undergone more transformation in four decades than in the century before: the 1984 launch of private television created the dual broadcasting system and the TV advertising market; the 1990s brought the internet and the first digital agencies; the 2000s saw Google and the search-advertising revolution; the 2010s belonged to Facebook, programmatic, and the mobile shift; and the 2020s are defined by the platforms' dominance, retail media, and artificial intelligence. Through all these disruptions, HORIZONT has remained the industry's constant: the forum where each transformation was debated, explained, and judged.

The German advertising market, Europe's largest, combines global holding-company networks with a strong independent agency scene, world-class advertisers from the automotive, FMCG, and retail sectors, and a distinctive media landscape. HORIZONT's reporting reflects this complexity: the magazine covers the global networks' strategies and the independents' creativity, the advertisers' marketing challenges and the media owners' business models, the German market's specifics and the international trends that shape it.

History

HORIZONT was founded in 1983 by Eduard Grosse and acquired in 1986 by the Deutscher Fachverlag in Frankfurt am Main. The founding came at a pivotal moment for the German advertising industry: the private television era was dawning, the agency business was professionalizing, and the industry needed its own forum. HORIZONT filled that need, becoming the industry's paper of record within years.

The magazine's four decades mirror the industry's transformations: the dual broadcasting system's launch, the internet's disruption, the rise of digital advertising, the platform era, and the current AI transformation. In August 2023, HORIZONT turned 40, with publisher Uwe Vorkötter reflecting in an essay on how the business and the journalism had changed over four decades. The Austrian edition, published since 1991 by the Manstein Verlag, a dfv Mediengruppe subsidiary, extends the brand across the border and serves Austria's marketing community with the same editorial standards. From 2001 to 2008, the sports-economy magazine Horizont Sportbusiness complemented the portfolio.

Coverage and Content

The editorial spectrum covers the entire marketing communication world: the marketing strategies of companies, from brand positioning to campaign launches; the trends in the agency business, from pitch news to holding-company strategies to the independent agency scene; and the developments in classic and digital media, from television to publishing to the platforms. The reporting is fast, opinionated, and networked: HORIZONT's editors are part of the industry they cover, and the magazine's conferences and events make it a physical meeting place.

The background reporting distinguishes HORIZONT from the daily news flow: the analyses explain the strategies behind the news, the commentaries take positions on the industry's controversies, and the interviews give the decision-makers a voice. The magazine's role as the industry's forum means that its pages are where the industry talks to itself: the debates about pitch practices, about the platforms' power, about the future of the agency model, all play out in HORIZONT. The personnel news, from agency appointments to CMO changes, functions as the industry's bulletin board: who moves where signals where the industry is heading, and HORIZONT's coverage of the people business is as closely read as its strategy analyses.

Awards and Events

The HORIZONT Award, presented since 1983, ranks among the German advertising industry's most prestigious honors, recognizing the personalities who shaped the industry. The HORIZONT Sportbusiness Award, since 2000, honors the sports-economy leaders. In 2006, the Deutscher Fachverlag founded the HORIZONT-Stiftung, which supports young talent from the communications and agency industries.

The events business complements the publishing: HORIZONT's conferences, award ceremonies, and industry gatherings make the brand a physical presence in the industry's calendar. The award nights, where the industry's leaders are honored, are among the German advertising year's social highlights: the ceremonies celebrate the personalities and the work, and the networking shapes the relationships that drive the business. The combination of publishing, awards, and events creates the HORIZONT ecosystem: the magazine reports on the industry, the awards honor its leaders, and the events bring them together.

Organization and Ownership

HORIZONT is published by the dfv Mediengruppe (Deutscher Fachverlag GmbH), based at Mainzer Landstraße 251 in Frankfurt am Main. The editor-in-chief is Eva-Maria Schmidt, and the publisher (Herausgeber) is Uwe Vorkötter. The dfv Mediengruppe, one of Germany's largest specialist publishers, provides the infrastructure for the HORIZONT brand's multi-platform operation.

The business model combines subscriptions (the digital subscription with full online access, e-paper, and archive), advertising from the industry's own players, and the events and awards business. The HORIZONTJobs career market serves as the industry's recruiting instrument and job board, adding a classifieds revenue stream.

Digital Presence

Horizont.net is the industry's daily news source: the high-reach website publishes the news as it happens, complemented by the HORIZONT Mobile smartphone offering and the apps for Android and iOS. The digital subscription provides full access to all articles, the e-paper editions for workplace and tablet use, and the online print archive reaching back through the decades.

The digital transformation of HORIZONT mirrors the industry's: from the weekly print newspaper to the bi-weekly magazine plus daily digital news, the brand has adapted its rhythms to the readers' changed media habits. The combination of the print magazine's background depth with the website's daily news speed makes HORIZONT the industry's indispensable medium: the place where Germany's marketing, advertising, and media professionals start their day and deepen their understanding. After four decades, the brand that Eduard Grosse founded in 1983 remains what it has always been: the forum of an industry that reinvents itself continuously, the publication that documents, debates, and judges each reinvention, and the career companion of generations of marketing professionals.