ROADS: Romanian online ad market in 2016 grew 22%, to €41M

Cristina Blanaru Creativity, Digital & Media, Marketing, Studies

The most recent edition of ROADS (Romanian Online Advertising Study), made by IAB Bucharest and PwC Romania, shows the total reported value of the Romanian online ad market for 2016 was of €41M, up 22% compared to the previous year.

The second half of 2016 attracted online ad budgets of €24M, up 36% compared to the 1st half of the year and up 19% compared to the same period in 2015.

The numbers for 2016 are good and we must maintain a comparable growth rhythm both individually and together, as industry. We will continue to work to extending ROADS’ coverage, the only study that calculates exactly, aggregated and anonymously, the total sales of online advertising for the participant companies

Gabriel Patru,

President IAB Romania

Considering the strong economic growth at country’s level, fueled by consumption, the Romanian online ad market posted a strong growth last year, confirming the extremely high potential of the segment, which is highly mentioned for a long time but didn’t show during the previous years. To capitalize this favorable evolution, publishers must come with quality content to satisfy companies’ needs to target different market segments

Bogdan Belciu,

Partner, Management consultancy services, PwC Romania

The top 5 industries are rounding up 45% from the total of the online ad investments and, even if the order changed, the industries leading the top remain the same. The undisputed leader for 7 years is telecom (€6M), followed by Finance (€3.5M, up from 4th to 2nd place), Cosmetics and toiletries (€3.4M, up from 5th to 3rd), Drinks (€3M, down one position compared to last year) and online (€2.9M, down from 2nd place last year).

The Embed formats (all banners formats, static or rich media, including skyscrapers or expandable) are the preferred ad formats, with attracted investments of €10M, followed by Interruptive formats – €4M, Content (sponsored content areas: website, homepage, landing page, dedicated newsletters etc) – €3M and Mobile – €3.4M, while video ads attracted €1.4M, constantly growing from one semester to another

According to IAB Romania’s estimates , the trend for next year is for interruptive formats to be surpassed by Content Sponsorship.

According to the data reported by media agencies, when it comes of budget allocated for different digital channels, advertisers prefer to invest mainly in social networks and search engines, and just after that in the local publishing market.

Starting last year, ROADS included among the measured formats also the programmatic media buy, which attracted a share of 17% of the total media digital budgets last year.