Media Fact Book 2019 by Initiative: Romanian media market’s value in 2018 = €454M

Romanian media market posted a sustained growth in 2018, reaching €454M in the end of the year, up 10% compared to 2017, as the new Media Fact Book from Initiative Romania shows.

The media market will still wait for an extra year to reach half billion euro value. Romania entered a period of deceleration when it comes of economic growth, a fact that influences our industry. The rapid growths from previous years aren’t sustainable any longer because the important parameters that influence the volumes spent by advertisers reached a limit, for example: consumers trust or his buying power, the last decreasing because of inflation that influenced the consumption products’ prices. In this context, the media market reduced its growth steps to 10% in 2018 and to an estimated 7% in 2019, with the possibility to be the witnesses of much smaller percentages in the next years

Alexandra Olteanu,

Managing Director Initiative

TV investments continued their growth also in 2018, by 10%, reaching €300M, while the rest of the channels – online, radio, OOH – confirmed the growing trend, with the only exception of print, that continues to decrease moderately.

In 2019, the TV market will post the same trend, with a much slower rhythm, towards 5% in terms of sales income.

TV dominated Romanians’ consumption habits, with an average of 5.1 hours a day among urban population aged 18-49. Still, TV market is slightly decreasing in favor of digital industry, as a consequence of the increases registered in internet and smart tech usage.

OOH continues on the same growing trend started in 2017, despite legislation, with a 5% maintained also in 2018, while radio follows the same trend and attracted budgets of €25.7M last year. On the other hand, the difficulties from the recession period continued to have a negative impact over printed press, that decreased for the 10th year in a row, with an average of 5%.

When it comes of digital, socializing networks and search remain the main pillars for online activity. Moreover, most internet users (76%) have shown a high appetite for video content and audio streaming, where a revenue growth is estimated for the following years, as more and more services of this kind appear on the market.

Facebook remains extremely popular in Romania, with over 10M users in 2018.

GDPR norms didn’t affected the time spent in digital and haven’t stopped the budgets to be allocated to online. In 2019, the estimation is that the online ad market will increase by 16% compared to 2018  (€99M).

For the current year, Initiative estimates a new increase of the media market by 7% (€485M).

When it comes the top of companies with biggest ad investments budgets, same as in 2018, most money came from pharma, mobile telecom, cosmetics, personal care and beauty. Consumers spent in online shops, on averahe, €10M a day, a significant increase compared to 2017, when the amount was of €7,67M.

Media Fact Book is the only report that analyzes the Romanian media and marketing market. It is published by Initiative since 1997. In 2019, the report includes a special chapter dedicated to video streaming, research based on existent services, but also including future predictions. Media Fact Book also includes a chapter dedicated to Romanian economy in 2018 and 2019, together with an analysis of the media market in CEE. The full report is available for free, in digital format, on www.mediafactbook.ro.