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The Romanian media market advanced last year 10 percent compared to 2017, to 454 million euro, and is expected to grow 7 percent in 2019, according to the 2018 Media Fact Book released this week.
"The media market will need another year to reach half a billion euro. Romania has entered an economic slowdown period, which impacts our industry. The rapid growth of the past years is no longer sustainable, because the major parameters that influence advertising spending have hit a cap, like for instance consumer confidence or the consumer's purchasing power, which has lately deteriorated against the backdrop of consumer price inflation. In this context, the media market's growth pace has slowed down from 10 percent in 2018 to an estimated 7 percent in 2019, and we may witness even lower rates in the coming years," says Alexandra Olteanu, managing director at Initiative, the company that authored the report.
The document also notes that TV investments continued to grow in 2018 by 10 percent, reaching 300 million euro, while the rest of the channels - online, radio, Out-of-Home, confirmed their upward trend; with a moderate, but steady decrease, print media is the only exception.
"Television dominated the Romanians' consumption habits, with an average of 5.1 hours per day spent watching, among the urban population aged 18-49. However, the TV market is slightly losing ground to the digital industry, as a result of growth in Internet and smart technology usage," the report said.
Despite the legislative measures, the OOH market continues its upward trend initiated in 2017, keeping a 5 percent growth rate in 2018. The radio market also went uphill, to 25.7 million euro. On the other hand, difficulties during the recession period kept negatively impacting print media, which dropped for the tenth consecutive year by about 5 percent.
In digital media, the social networks and search engines remain the main pillars of online activity. Most internet users (76 percent) showed a high appetite for video content and audio streaming, which are expected to grow in the coming years, as increasingly more service options appear.
AGERPRES
