This master's thesis talks about the importance of brandiong web portals on the Croatian market and a well designed communication strategy. Since web portals are also channels through which organizations brand themselves, it was important to draw attention to web portals themselves as brands. Even though there are a lot of web portals on the Croatian market, this thesis is focused on the comparison of two specific types of portals: a news portal Večernji.hr and a lifestyle portal Mixer.hr. While one of the portals has been around for many years and is already an established brand, the other one is fairly new and is just now building its brand identity. To fully demonstrate the importance of branding in the volatile market conditions, two research methods were used on multiple different samples. Semi-structured in-depth interviews with the editor of the Večernji.hr portal Darijo Markas and the editor of the Mixer.hr portal Karla Horvat were conducted to research if editors perceive the communication strategy of their portals as one of good quality and why. Interviews with 3 communication experts, Damir Jugo, Dario Čerpinko and Filip Kunder were conducted to examine how the profession views the connection of a communication strategy with a web portal’s business success. Lastly, a survey among 100 readers of Croatian web portals was conducted to research how important the branding of a web portal is for its success. Through the use of recent literature, interviews with web portal editors and communication experts as well as surveys among web portal readers, the goal of this thesis was to answer these research questions: 1) Is a communication strategy integral to the success of a web portal? 2) Do readers prefer branded portals over those without a firm brand identity?