MFB17: Romanian media market to post a 10% increase in 2017

Cristina Blanaru Business, Consumption Habits, Creativity, Digital & Media, Marketing, Media, Mobile, OOH / DOOH, Studies

Romanian Initiative launched its annual report Media Fact Book, which estimates the media market will post, by the end of 2017, a similar growth compared to last year, of 10%. The local media market is estimated to reach a value of €403M, up from €366M in 2016. Provided the growth will keep the same rhythm, the Romanian media market is expected to reach again the peak from 2008 in 2020.

2015 and 2016 brought to the media market the biggest growth after the economical crises and the trend is expected to continue. This positive development depends also by factors related to country’s economy, as the growth was helped last year by the increase of the internal consumption due to the increase of the medium income per economy, and by the decrease of VAT. Still, the media consumption per capita, worth €17 in 2016, is much under the global average of €70 and impossible to compare with the €150 one in the Western European countries

Alexandra Olteanu,

Managing Director, Initiative

Although the digital share grows constantly in the recent years, Romania remains a market dominated by TV. Considering the wide range of commercial TVs, combined with a decline of audience for the main target public and the constant growth of the ad income in 2016 and 2017, the TV rates are under a strong inflation influence. Still, TV was the main engine of the Romanian media market last year, with a 13% growth, the biggest after 2009, and a total value of €240M.

Digital, with 18% share on the media market, still didn’t reach its full potential in Romania, compared to other countries, but is expected to get close, during next years, to the level registered in Europe. In 2016, digital increased by 12%, to €64M. For the near future, the highest growth perspective are seen in areas like video and mobile ads tailored for this environment, considering the increase of internet access via smartphones. Facebook posts the highest growth, as it’s the medium Romanians spend the most time on (6.9M users on daily basis, from which 6.1M access it from mobile devices).

 

Radio attracted ad revenues of €20M last year, up 5% compared to 2015. With a daily media consumption of 96 minutes, radio is used mainly for promotions and tactical campaigns. When it comes of OOH, it remained to a stable level, attracting total ad budgets of €28M, and is estimated to slightly grow during next years, despite legislation instability.

Print is the channel that posted the strongest decrease in term of readers, copies and attracted budgets, as readers migrated more and more to the other channels and due to the lack of differentiation between titles in the same category. After a 10% decrease, print’s results in term of attracted media budgets are of €14M.

According to MFB17, the way the budgets will be distributed between media channels in 2017 is slightly different: TV is expected to grow another 10%, online with 15%, radio with 13% and outdoor with 5%, while print will continue its decline, with -5%.

Media Fact Book (MFB) is the only analysis report of the Romanian media and advertising market, published yearly by Initiative since 1997. The report includes this year an analysis for the media market in CEE and a new chapter on Big Data. The full report is available for download on www.mediafactbook.ro.