Romanian Internet users: only 3.5 million

The estimate of the total number of Romanian Internet users has decreased dramatically, due to the new system of measurement introduced by Trafic.ro [ro], the unofficial audience top of the Romanian sites. According to a Trafic.ro press release, the users accessing Romanian sites from Romania (unique visitors per week) was 3.539.507 between February 26 and March 4.

Previous figures indicated a total of 7 million users, but on a monthly basis. On March 1st, Trafic.ro introduced a new system, eliminating the duplication and thus dropping the total number of “absolute unique visitors” per week at 3.5 million.

Official data about Internet traffic will be available during the second half of 2007. Earlier this year, Spring GmbH [en] won the auction that designated the company to provide official audience data. The audit will be supervized by BRAT [ro], the Romanian ABC.

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1. Romanian Internet users: only 3,5 million…

   …

   Trackback by topica.ro — March 10, 2007 #

2. Actually, Iulian, those are 3.5 M weekly unique cookies, and not real people using the internet. But yes, one may say that since across a whole year, the Romanian online population is around 5 million, according to offline national surveys, that figure may be “approximately fair”.

   Comment by Ionut Oprea — March 15, 2007 #

3. I sincerely doubt that trafic.ro can be used as a reliable source for guesstimating the number of internet users.

   First, they target web traffic only.

   Second, they are not the only web traffic aggregator focused on the Romanian market, so they will naturally not be able to count everyone on the web even.

   Thirdly, as previously pointed out, those are cookies. Not everyone accepts cookies on their computer (I just denied the one for Romanian Media Explained). And sometimes more than one person uses the same machine with a single cookie on it.

   In talking with a journalist over the winter, I offered to help find some information on Romanian internet usage because it’s a topic I am interested in. Anecdotally, I’ve seen tremendous growth in only the last two or three years. However, I did manage to scrounge up a couple of interesting indicators from reliables sources.

   Internet adoption rate in Romania as of March 2005 was 23.2% (4,940,000 Internet users as of March/05, 23.2% penetration). Additionally, I’ve seen recent reports that Romania broadband adoption rate, alone, has been growing at 15% per quarter.

   http://www.internetworldstats.com/europa.htm
   and
   http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0610/
   respectively

   That seems to roughly validate my personal guesstimate of probably 30+% and minimum 25% to be just about correct. Especially after you factor in family computers and internet cafe usage.

   In any event, Trafic.ro should not be viewed at all as a source of data about the number of users. It can, on the other hand, be somewhat useful in spotting big trends in web surfing analysis… to some degree or another.

   Which brings me to something I’ve wondered for a long, long time. Web stats are proprietary data with specific value. Why do commercial entities give that data away to Trafic.ro to make money from (and for competitors to possibly learn from).

   Boggles the mind!

   Comment by Romer!can — March 19, 2007 #

4. Romer!can: thanks for the valuable insight. Re. your question, I can only say that Trafic.ro has been a transition phenomenon. It came after Top100.ro, which was a voting hierarchy, and everybody was happy to see their site in a top and to get a picture of their popularity. I believe such tops existed more or less on many other markets.

   Things are changing now, with the advent of the new professional measurement system to be implemented by Spring GmbH, under the supervising of BRAT, the Romanian ABC. Another problem with Trafic.ro was the ownership - it is held by the biggest media broker on the market, Boom/Netbridge.

   One might think there is a connection between the defection of the Netbridge team at Mediapro Interactiv, last year, and the change in terms of audience measurement.

   Comment by Iulian Comanescu — March 20, 2007 #

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