“Our market share is lower than it should be as far as advertising is concerned. We have a huge audience, we are leader of the market in this respect, but because we did not invest in content and local services in the past, we have not turned this audience into the market share that we should have,” Parcot said.
For instance, Yahoo!’s instant messaging application has six million unique users, while the e-mail portal has around five million users in Romania every month.
“If we look at our audience, Romania is Yahoo!’s second largest market globally,” Parcot said. “More than 90% of Romanian Internet users use Yahoo! services on a monthly basis. Only Taiwan has a higher audience, of 95%.”
After launching a Romanian language portal in March, through a partnership with local content providers, the American company will become even more aggressive on the Romanian market, by adding local content and new services in order to boost its market share, says the Yahoo! representative.
“Even though our Romanian figures are relatively low now, if we can double them, Romania could account for 10% of next year’s growth of Yahoo!,” Parcot said.