Campaigns of the millennium: Who invested and who acquired profit out of the big media promotions in Romania?

By their promotions, the media companies are trying to gain loyal target and broaden it. Similar to other industries, such strategy entails the public, but it also encumbers a range of disadvantages. Among such weak points it’s worth mentioning the costs, as well as the fact that the targeted public could be guided to a false direction by the value added by a promotion, depending on its object, prizes in cash or other benefits. Such benefits run the risk on putting into a secondary position the very thing the media is selling, the very content of the newspaper or television.
When conceiving a strategy, selecting marketing professionals is a difficult task. We are talking about an investment into prizes or objects for an additional value, as the CDs, books or cosmetics, with an uncertain result. Certainly, the circulation increases during promotion, and decreases later on. There are a lot of factors to be taken into consideration, but two of them are critical. First of all, if the investment into promotion is compensated by the circulation increase or, at least, in case the loss is acceptable and undertaken. Secondly, when the promotion ends, the circulation is above the one prior to the campaign, meaning that the publication gained a larger number of readers. | 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.

Romanian on-line advertising market predictions: 8-9 millions seem likely

Cristi Manafu asked and got [ro] from several well-known on-line managers, predictions about the net volume of the on-line advertising market. The predictions vary betwen 6 and 11 milion euros. Bogdan Gavrilă took over the managers’ statements and analyzed [en] them in a knowledgeable and convincing way. From Bogdan’s analysis, it seems likely that the market will be 8-9 million in 2007.

One of the main media brokers on the market, ARBOmedia, recently released [en] a presentation where the cash in 2006 was stated to be 5,5 million euro, with a forecast of 8,4 million euro in 2007.

Spring GmbH will officially audit the Romanian Internet

Spring GmbH [EN] has been designated as the company that will audit the traffic on the Romanian Internet sites, at the BRAT (Romanian ABC) [RO] Internet division’s meeting on Thursday night. Spring GmbH won in the final against Gemius (Poland) and Weborama (France).

The implementation of the technical system will follow. Traffic figures will be available at half-2007.

Until now, unofficial figures were available on Trafic.ro, a top of the Romanian sites owned by Boom/Netbridge, one of the big media brokers and software developers on the Romanian Internet market.

Romanian televisions market shares in 2006

The highest market share TV stations in Romania are the first channel of the public television, TVR 1 (16,8 %), and two commercial TV stations, Pro TV (15,8 %) and Antena 1 (13,6 %), according to TNS-AGB data for national, whole day, processed and provided by Antena 1.

While the public television has lost some of its audience since the beginning of the decade and has been undermined by political scandals in the meanwhile, Pro TV is the first successful commercial TV station in Romania, launched on December 1st 1995. | More…

The Romanian Internet advertising market: 5,5 million euros in 2006, 8,4 million forecast for 2007

The Romanian Internet advertising market is estimated in 2007 at 8,4 million euros net, according to the “Internet Advertising 2007″ forecast of ARBOmedia [RO], the most important Internet ad broker.

The Internet advertising expenditures grew significantly during the last years in Romania. 2006 was 5,5 million euros, while 2005 had been only 2.5 million. According to the mentioned source, 2005 was the year the market crossed the 1 % of the entire market limit.

The first year included in the ARBOmedia forecast is 1999, with 100.000 euros: | More…

The national daily newspapers market (updated): 915.000 distributed copies

According to the Romanian ABC (BRAT) figures released at mid-December, the market of the Romanian daily newpapers might have slightly dropped. BRAT published only the figures of 11 titles, which decreased by 6,7 per cent, but the data about the rest of the titles, unaudited and audited, but without figures for July-September 2006, are not available yet. “Jurnalul naţional” dropped down from no. 2 (over 90.000 sold copies) to no. 4 (slightly more than 70.000).

The total market of the Romanian national newspapers raises to roughly 915.000 distributed copies, including the Compact free newspaper and sports, Hungarian language and financial titles, or 598.000 sold copies for the purely general interest newspapers. 4 of the 6 greatest circulation titles belong to Ringier România, while the other two are owned by Intact (Dan Voiculescu).

The leader of the market, Libertatea, a Ringier title, sells roughly 245.000 copies and has a market share of 27 %, including free, sports, business, hungarian, or 41 %, on the purely general interest, sold at newsstands dailies. Adevarul, a quality recently taken over by the controversial oil mogul Dinu Patriciu, went out of the top 10, but Averea, another title acquisitioned by the same, entered it.

According to their sold circulation and other characteristics, the newspapers on the Romanian market could be divided into three cathegories: sexy young-mature, mid-life crisis and agonizing dwarves. | More…

The Big 5 on the Romanian media market

The circulation figures published earlier this week by BRAT [RO] (the Romanian ABC) are relevant for the changes in the Romanian media during the last year. Nine of the 11 daily titles that presented data for July-September 2006 are controlled by Ringier Romania, Dan Voiculescu, Dinu Patriciu and Adrian Sîrbu, a situation that shows a clear sign of concentration of the media ownership in Romania in the hands of ‘Five Big’ companies. The ‘Fifth Big’ is Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu, due to ‘Cotidianul’, an unaudited newspaper with some potential, and some other media assets.

Together with the distribution of ‘Compact’, Ringier Romania’s free newspaper, and also including unaudited titles or titles that haven’t presented their latest figures yet, the entire national daily newspapers market raises to around 950,000 sold/distributed copies per day, for a population of 21,6 million inhabitants. Taking into consideration this approximate, but however relevant total, Dinu Patriciu holds, with ‘Averea’ and ‘Adevărul’, a 5,2 % market share (almost 50,000 sold copies for the two newspapers). Adrian Sîrbu also has roughly 4,8 % of the market with ‘Gândul’ and ‘Ziarul financiar’, while Dan Voiculescu controls a 14,6 % share, with the 141,000 sold copies of ‘Jurnalul naţional’ and ‘Gazeta sporturilor’ sports newspaper. | More…

Circulation variations: the latest Romanian ABC results

The Romanian ABC (BRAT) posted on its site [RO] the circulation figures corresponding to 11 daily newspapers (general interest, sports, financial), for July-September 2006. According to the data, the total sold circulation of the 11 titles has decreased from 754.156 copies to 703.148, or by 6,7 %, compared to January-June 2006. The highest decrease belongs to the newspaper on the 2nd place (excepting the sports newspapers), ‘Jurnalul naţional’, whose sales went down with 23,3 %, due to the absence of massive promotions (the so-called Dacia Logan car campaigns) in the audited period. The highest increase in sold circulation, 61,9 %, belongs to ‘Averea’, recently taken over by Dinu Patriciu, a controversial Romanian oil mogul, and the former team of ‘Libertatea’, the leader of the market, that left the Ringier title several months ago.

Together with the unaudited titles and the titles subscribing to BRAT, but with no data for July-September, the whole market of the Romanian national daily newspapers raises to around 950,000 sold copies in average.

Variations of the main daily newspapers, Autumn 2006

Top Romanian manager forecast about the Romanian media market in 2007: concentration, involvement into the local market, new media

Dragos Stanca, the General Director of the Caţavencu Group (Realitatea Media), gave Comanescu.ro a forecast about the Romanian media market in 2007:
‘I believe 2007 will show a general trend of consolidation of the Romanian publishing market.

• The successful local newspapers will be taken over by big trusts, the unsuccessful ones will disappear, especially if Ringier will get back on the local market, after the unsuccessful experience with ’Ziarul de Cluj’ (1998).
• At least three companies that publish only magazines, with a turnover smaller than 5 million euros, will be acquisitioned by bigger companies. | More…