Gemius: Romania has most internet users (8.8M) in South East Europe

Cristina Blanaru Digital & Media, e-Commerce, Mobile, Social Media, Studies

Romania is the biggest South Eastern European country in terms of internet users, with 8.8M registered in December 2013, according to “Online Landscape : South East Europe” report, made by Gemius.

In Balkans, the number of internet users keeps growing. In Bulgaria and Serbia, 1 in 8 people is present online, while the online population in Romania, Macedonia, Slovenia and Croatia increased by 10% during the last year. Although an ascending trend in terms of number of internet users is visible, internet’s penetration rate in the region remains one of the lowest. For example, in Romania, only 48% of the population has access to the internet.

Although the internet penetration rate in Romania is one of the lowest in the region, the foreign investments on the online market are noticeably increasing. During the last 12 months, the investment in online advertising are mainly due to big international players, which are focusing on generating traffic and conversions

Victor Avram,

Country Manager Gemius for Romania and Moldova.

Mobile traffic is rapidly increasing in Romania: from 3% in January 2013 to 7% in March 2014. The growth trend for mobile traffic will continue in 2014, therefor covering this segment will become mandatory in any advertiser’s online strategy

When it comes of the most popular websites, Romania follows the trends in the region, so that big global websites occupy the first positions in the top. Google, Facebook and Yahoo rank first, with 86%, 80% and, respectively, 73% reach. Online video content becomes more and more popular all over Central and Eastern Europe and Romania is no exception: YouTube has 68% reach and ranks 4th in popularity top.

Who are the Romanian internet users?

According to the study, Romanian internet users are mostly female (54%, with interest in taking care by health), with men representin 46% and showing interest for erotics and gambling.

Romanian internet users live mainly in towns (67%), with rural internet users representing only a third of the total.

When it comes of education, most Romanian internet users are highschool and college graduates (48%), 29% have universitary or post-universitary education, while 22% graduated vocational school and gymnasium or have less education than gymnasium.

Gemius Romanian Internet users profile

 

When it comes of e-commerce, over 4.5M internet users are accessing e-commerce websites on monthly basis, with online commerce growing constantly, both with the horizontal expansion of the big players (like emag.ro) and the apparition and consolidation of new niche stores. On the other side, classified websites become more and more popular, with 2 of them – tocmai.ro and olx.ro (formerly mercador.ro) – being in top 10.

In 2014, the main trends of the market are

  • Google will keep growing up, while Facebook will see an accelerated decline
  • More and more global players will enter the market (Shazam, Daily Motion, Facebook Premium)
  • The number of companies that will offer programmatic buying platforms and systems will increase

“Online Landscape: South East Europe” report presents the characteristic of the online markets in Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia. The data used within the report are from December 2013. In making the Romanian report, Dragos Stanca, Managing Partner Think Digital Romania and Mihai Seceleanu, CEO Internet Corp, worked with Gemius team.