The Romanian media market is expected to increase by 10% year-on-year in 2017, to reach EUR 403 million, according to the Media Fact Book report launched by the media agency Initiative on June 7.

The growth will be similar to last year’s. In 2016, the Romanian media market reached a value of EUR 366 million.

“The years 2015 and 2016 brought the biggest post-crisis growth for the media market and this trend is expected to continue. However, this positive development also depends on factors related to the country's economy, helped last year by the growth in domestic consumption against the increase of the average wage and the lower VAT,” said Alexandra Olteanu, the managing director of Initiative.

“However, the media consumption per capita, which stood at EUR 17 in 2016, is far below the level of around EUR 70 registered globally, and cannot be compared with the one of over EUR 150 registered in Western European countries,” she added.

Although the share of the digital has steadily increased in recent years, Romania remains a media market highly dominated by TV.

Taking into account the versatility of the offer of commercial TV stations, combined with an audience decline among the main targets of public, and a sustained increase in advertising revenues in 2016 and 2017, TV prices are under strong inflationary pressure, according to Initiative Media. However, this channel was the main driver of the media market last year, with an increase of 13%, the highest since 2009, reaching the value of EUR 240 million.

The digital, with a market share of 18%, has not yet reached its potential in Romania compared to other countries but is expected to get close to the level registered in Europe in the coming years. In 2016, the digital rose by 12% to EUR 64 million. In terms of growth prospects, the video advertising associated with this type of content and the mobile will deliver the best results in the near future, powered by the growing Internet access on smartphones at very high speeds, according to the report. Facebook registers the fastest growth, having 6.9 million daily users.

Meanwhile, the radio is another media channel that grew by 5% in 2016 compared to 2015, reaching the value of EUR 20 million. The average daily radio consumption currently stands at 96 minutes, and this channel is used mainly for promotions and tactical campaigns.

The print had another year of decline in terms of number of readers, budgets and print runs, mainly caused by the growing preference for the other channels, but also by the lack of differentiation between titles in the same category. Thus, after a 10% drop, the print market reached EUR 14 million in 2016.

The report also shows that the way the budgets are allocated between media channels will slightly change this year: the TV is expected to grow by 10%, the online by 15%, and the radio by 13%, its biggest increase so far.

The Media Fact Book analyzes the Romanian media and advertising market. Initiative has been publishing the report annually since 1997.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com