June round-up: BBC and Free Europe go off-air, political virals, legal restrictions

• BBC Romania and Radio Free Europe Romania are to go off-air on August 1st, due to buget restrictions. BBC Romania offered employees several month’s wage as a compensation

• Two senators proposed and got a modification of the Audiovisual Law that asks television stations broadcasting positive and negative topics news in equal proportions. If promulgated by Romania’s president, Traian Basescu, the law will become effective
• Evenimentul zilei, one of the leading quality newspapers and a phenomenon in the nineties, got a management: Horia Ghibuţiu as an Editor-in-Chief and Vlad Macovei as a Deputy, after Răzvan Ionescu and Grigore Cartianu’s resignal, several weeks ago
• The two candidates for the 2nd round of the local elections in Bucharest, Romania’s capital, released two viral materials in youtube. Sorin Oprescu, the winner of the June 15th vote, scored over 26,000 views:

  In the video, Sorin Oprescu, an independent (former social-democrate), pretends to keep a speech about political independence, while chasing a bulldog, his opponent’s impersonation. | More…

Romanian media outlet going to the Czech market

Mediafax, a press agency owned by the Romanian Media Mogul Adrian Sârbu, COO of the CME, is extending on the Czech market. At the end of 2007, a Czech company owned by Media Pro Management SA was registered in Prague, with Mihai Predescu as a GM. According to Media Pro sources, Mediafax-Prague will be more than a newswire and there are some other plans for Eastern Europe.

CME and Adrian Sârbu own Pro TV, the leader of the TV market, and various other print, new media, radio and TV assets.

Internet ad market: 14-15 million euros in Romania, 2008

According to the two main Romanian internet advertising brokers, BOOM and ARBOinteractive, the internet advertising market will total 14-15 million euros cash in 2007. The estimate of 14,5 euros released by ARBOmedia at half-2007 has been confirmed recently by Magda Zanders, sales director at BOOM, during an ymterview [ro] (interview by Yahoo Messenger) with this author. Zander also said the faster growers in terms of money spent on the internet will be FMCG, especially Unilver. BOOM’s sales manager also expected a response from P&G.

The internet campaigns are complementary to off-line.

Internet advertising sales rose to roughly 5,5 million euros in 2006 and 8-9 millions in 2007. Common rate cards range from 7 to 30 euros CPM, discount is often 50% and the brokers’ commission is usually 30%.

The first official traffic measurements on Romanian sites

The first results of the Romanian Internet Audience Study (SATI) were published today on the Romanian ABC site, BRAT.ro. SATI was initated at the beginning of the year, as an official alternative to the data provided by Trafic.ro, and are provided by Spring Gmbh, a german company with credentials in this kind of measurements.

The September data (see link) only include the owners that were willing to pay taxes between 400 and 10000 euros for participating in the study - according to their estimated traffic. Most of the sites in the top are content (news) sites owned by big classic media groups, that are likely to offer advertising based upon official figures, according to the rules in TV or print ad sales. The highest volume independents are Clubafaceri.ro (Medianet), Neogen.ro (Neogen), Roportal.ro (Roportal SRL) and Acasa.ro (Vodanet Media), according to the unique visitors (clients) count. The highest position of a news site is taken by HotNews.ro (HotNews.ro SRL), another independent site, followed closely by several sports and tabloid sites belonging to big classic media groups.

Targeted advertising offer on Comanescu.HotNews.ro

“Media lui Comanescu” launched a targeted advertising offer, beginning with October 1st, 2007. The rate card is 100 RON (roughly 30 euros)/1000 impressions. Advertising is sold via ARBOmedia.

“Media lui Comanescu” (”Comanescu’s Media”) is Iulian Comanescu’s Romanian language mass-media blog, a leader in this category in the Romanian blogosphere. Its traffic varies between 1200 and 1500 unique visitors per day. Among the readers of “Media lui Comanescu” there are journalists and managers in all the important media outlets in Romania (table with networks that access it here. Media group visits marked with red).

German investor increases its involvment on the Romanian media market

European Media Investment AG (EMI), an ARBOmedia company, is planning a strategic expansion on the Romanian market, by continuing the local newspapers takeover campaign, investing into two printing plants and a local news Internet portal. ARBOmedia/EMI is already present on the Romanian market with several local titles. Its main competitors are the Austrians from Inform Media and also the PubliMedia local network, developed by Adrian Sârbu with CME support.

ARBOmedia also owns 80% of one of the two most important internet advertising brokers.

The EMI board recently took the decision to get listed at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, according to [EN] Finanztreff.de.

ARBOmedia.ro [EN]

Investment frenzy came to a halt on the Romanian media market

During the last two years, the Romanian media market has been prone to an investment frenzy, especially from the part of some very rich and controversial Romanian businessmen, who got a position on the major media groups list by their moves. However, it seems to have come to a halt.

Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu, one of the richest Romanians, has cancelled his plans for two new niche televisions, ‘Picanto’ (cooking channel) and ‘Wedding TV’ (a franchise of the British namesake). The move might have been due to the fact that his recently re-launched Romantica, a women channel, has rather small audience figures, and Realitatea TV, Vîntu’s leading rolling news niche television, is losing its advance to Antena 3, its main competitor on the segment.

In spite of giving in 75% of the huge oil Rompetrol conglomerate to KazMunaiGaz, a kazah state company, for 2,7 billion dollars, Dinu Patriciu doesn’t have any spectacular investment plans for his newly-acquired media group. In spite of becoming the richest Romanian, the businessman stated to the Romanian business weekly ‘Money Express’ he would focus on ‘building a competent management’ for his media business, a process which he says he has already started successfully. | More…

Media event in Bucharest

On October 11th, at the Howard Johnson Hotel, a conference called ‘Newspapers and new media in dialogue with the future’ is to take place, organized by Freedom House and the Media Management Institute. Among the speakers there are Cristian Tudor Popescu, president of the Romanian Press Club, John Chisholm, a strategy advisor of WAN, well-known managers in the Romanian media. Iulian Comanescu will also have a presentation called ‘The news aggregators and the traditional content producers’.

Details [EN] on the conference site.

Two Romanian video sharing sites successfully launched in 2007

Trilulilu.ro and Video.Neogen.ro quickly attracted a considerable traffic after their launch in January and April 2007. The former is an independent site launched by several small IT&C companies from Cluj, and managed by Sergiu Biriş, and lately overcame 160,000 unique visitors/week, according to Trafic.ro. The latter is a part of Neogen, the most successful community in Romania. Sources from Neogen state Video.Neogen.ro makes, together with Club.Neogen.ro, Audio.Neogen.ro and Foto.Neogen.ro, around 350,000 unique visitors/week.

The most popular clips on Trilulilu.ro have over 110,000 views, while Video.Neogen.ro, launched several months later, records a number slightly bigger than 52,000 visits. Both sites have a policy more liberal than YouTube in terms of adult content, and include disclaimers for the clips included in this category.

According to Sergiu Biriş, Trilulilu’s general manager, Neogen made an offer to buy his company after the January launch, but | More…

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.