As technology is evolving at the speed of light, so are the internet users’ habits and behaviors. The digital world is continuously changing and is shaping the way people communicate, shop, spend their free time, travel and work. Mobile internet used to be a luxury that only few could afford and use on a daily basis. Nowadays almost everyone, from children in playgrounds to seniors, have mobile phones or/and tablets connected to the internet. With these devices, internet access has become practically unlimited and this influences our everyday lives more than we can imagine.

Balkan countries are one of the smallest CEE markets in terms of internet population. There are only 23 Million users in the region, divided among countries. The biggest population is found in Romania, 9.3 million users in December 2014 and the smallest in Moldova, 1.7 million users. As far as internet penetration rate is concerned the values vary considerably from one country to another, ranging from 73% in Slovenia to 51% in Bosnia & Herzegovina (these values are calculated for users aged 18 to 69). 

If we talk about mobile traffic, we can observe a dynamic growth in the past two years: in 2012, mobile constituted only 3% of the internet traffic in the whole CEE region, excluding in-app traffic. This number has grown to 10% at present, mostly due to the rapid increase of smartphone page views.

The leader in mobile traffic is Croatia, where in June 2014 over 20% of page views were made via mobile devices. On the other hand in Moldova, only 1% of traffic was generated by mobile.

Nowadays, with the growing popularity of mobile devices, the online consumer behavior has become more complex than ever before. Internet consumption patterns are very different on each device type. During the week, 52% of the PC traffic happens amid working hours, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. In weekends the pattern changes:  54% of the PC traffic takes place between noon and 8 p.m. During the weekday, tablets are mostly used in the afternoons – 50% of the tablet traffic is recorded between 4 p.m. and 11 p.m. However, Saturdays and Sundays, tablets are used equally all along the day starting from 9 a.m. and ending at 11 p.m., reaching its peak between 10 and 11 p.m.

Similarly, phones are used equally during the whole day, with a peak time between 9 and 11 p.m. during the weekday, and between 9 and 10 p.min weekends. 

Content is king regardless of the device used for browsing the web. Mobile devices give the opportunity to target users with the right content in the right place and time on an unprecedented scale. However, the biggest challenge for advertisers and agencies is to keep the balance between personalized and intrusive content. Therefore, knowledge about the mobile consumer will become a source of competitive advantage for all companies operating online and research studies can be the key to successful targeting.

So, what are the online behaviors of users in the Balkan countries and which are the distinctive features of each market?

Bulgaria

In December 2013 the total internet population amounted to over 4.2 Million users aged 15 to 69. Although this number is increasing, there is another visible trend in the Bulgarian internet – users’ engagement in online activities is gradually decreasing. In 2013, Bulgarian internet users spent 1 hour 39 minutes less searching the web monthly and generated on average 19 page views less, than in 2012. The cause is the growing popularity of browsing the web via mobile devices and using mobile applications.

As far as the socio-demographic profile of users is concerned, 23% of the internet population is aged 15 to 24 and 47% is aged 25 to 44. Male users aged 15 to 24 are mainly interested in sports and auto, while 35+ females are searching online for cooking recopies. 90% of internet users live in urban areas and 30% are located in Sofia, the capital city. 57% have graduated from secondary school and 30% from post-university studies.

In terms of mobile traffic, in June 2014, 9% of all traffic was generated by mobile devices. However, less than 10% of all websites have a mobile version - from 300 websites measured monthly in the gemiusAudience study, only 30 mobile versions were present. Mobile versions of the sites are developed mainly by the large and mid-sized media groups. This is why most of the advertisers probably don't allocate big parts from their budgets in mobile - they don't have a large variety of possible mobile channels and as a result they cannot get the aimed reach as easily and cost-effective as they want. Despite this, the share of mobile advertising will rise in the following period.

In 2013 there were some changes in the ranking of the top 10 most popular websites in Bulgaria. The leader vbox7.com gave its first position to abv.bg. Prodavalnik.com (currently named OLX.bg) climbed to third place. New participants appeared in the list- in December the site for ladies zajenata.bg climbed to sixth place, the news website blitz.bg took position number eight and the news site inews.bg reached tenth place.

Shopping related content is very dynamic in Bulgaria and makes its way to the top, competing against traditional media. 67% of users are online shoppers and 75% of them are heavy or frequent buyers. The time spent by users to search online grew with 84% and the number of people searching online increased by 60%.  During the next months we should keep our eyes on classified ads and catalogs as they are the most likely categories to flourish.

Facebook is one of the most attractive locations for advertising communication, due to the penetration of smartphones and tablets which marked an enormous growth in social media consumption, and in particular in Facebook usage, which now enjoys the greatest popularity among Bulgarians. Investments in online advertisements in Google are also increasing.