Macedonia: Internet Penetration up to 2009

The following is an excerpt from my Masters Thesis defended at the University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne in 2009 under the title Impact of Social Media on Internet Marketing in Macedonia.

For a country of closely packed 2.1 million people, one would think that it would be easy to measure any demographic trend. However, the rate of internet usage in Macedonia, also known as internet penetration, remained a mystery for almost a decade after 1995. Until Metamorphosis Foundation produced the first statistical survey on ICT use in 2004, most of the data available to the public consisted of misinformation and offhand estimates. The former kind of info was usually disseminated by telecommunications market players, which never revealed the actual number of their own subscribers, but strived to soil the reputation of competitors. Some media, “experts,” and high government officials continued to propagate the mantra that the internet penetration is 4%, 7% or 10%¹ through inertia for several more years, disregarding statistical evidence that it hovered around 30% at the time.

The controversy took a new form after 2005, when other organizations, including the State Statistical Office, commenced with measuring the internet penetration. The basic difficulty involved defining internet usage as such. Some of the surveyors used the definition of a ‘person who has used the internet within the certain time period,’ but others maintained that, for instance the ‘true’ internet users should be defined as paying subscribers to ISPs, people who used the internet daily from home, etc. Implementations of these restrictive definitions would mean ‘filtering out’ of around half of the users who reported using the internet from internet cafes, or the growing number of people who didn’t have an internet connection at home, but accessed the net at work.

The difficulty of determining the exact rate of internet penetration in Macedonia can be illustrated with Table 1, displaying most of the publicly available data about surveys from the last six years. Various customers of the research agencies placed various conditions on the implementer resulting in variations of sample size, the age range of the respondents, and the kind and phrasing of questions. In the table, some cells remain empty because only publicly available data from the respective surveys is filled in.

Research publisher	Month. Year	Sample age	Sample size	PC use %	Internet use %	PC @ home %	Internet @ home %
Metamorphosis & FOSIM2	06.2004	12-50	1325	41	30	27	16
Metamorphosis & USAID3	06.2005	18+	850		29
FOSIM & MDC4	01.2006	18-55	1222		32		11
USAID MK Connects5	04.2006	4+	1017	43	27	37	13
MIS6	~06.2006	15-74		34	25
EAR TATS7	02.2007	14+	1500		24	31	13
USAID MK Connects	04.2007	4+	1057	47	32	40	17
MIS	~06.2007	15-74		41	30	33	16
MIS8	~06.2008	15-74		50	41	46	29
SMMRI9	11.2008	10-70	1300				44
GFK10	02.2009	15+	1000		50		43
Broadcasting Council RM11	09.2009	15+	1066		55	68

Table 1: The differences in methodology of internet penetration surveys conducted in Macedonia from 2004 to 2009 have led to almost incomparable results.

All this matters, because the inaccurate and pessimistic estimates and guesstimates of the market size hindered the development of internet marketing in Macedonia. Companies were choosing not to invest in online marketing. Marketing agencies and media rarely or never offered options in this area, thinking that the potential target population is too small.

This clinging to TV, radio and print also meant disregard of the notion that even if its small, the nascent population of internet users consisted of either the richest segment of the population—who could afford the initial high prices under monopolistic conditions—and the most technically and educationally advanced youth, inclined towards upward social mobility. This also meant ignoring the signals related to continuous increase of the internet penetration continues to rise, as the environment grew more enabling over the years. Influencing factors include price drop related to opening the market to competition resulting from the new Law on electronic communications in 2005, lifting the ban on use of wireless technologies, spread of cable TV networks offering internet access, and huge public projects for connecting the educational institutions at all levels to the internet.

Most recent data suggests that around half of the population in Macedonia use the internet with some degree of regularity. This rate of penetration is comparable to the average penetration of 45% for EU Member States from Southern Europe and Turkey, reported by Microsoft in April 2009.¹² Even though the small total size of the Macedonian market remains an obstacle (one would expect less opportunities there than in bigger countries with lower penetration, but more developed economy) this basic condition for development of internet marketing has been met.

References [some of them are inoperable in 2012]

1. MIA. (27.10.2005). Само 10% од Македонците имаат пристап на интернет [Only 10% of Macedonians have internet access]. Total online magazine
2. SMMRI. (2004). Use, positions and opinions about ICT among the citizens in Macedonia. Metamorphosis and Foundation Open Society Institute – Macedonia.
3. BRIMA-Gallup.(2005). Catalogue of Local Gov. e-Services. Metamorphosis Foundation and USAID MDW Project.
4. SMMRI. (2006). Technical Conditions and Development Potential for Broadcasting in Republic of Macedonia. Foundation Open Society Institute – Macedonia and Media Development Center.
5. SMMRI. (2006). Internet and Computer Usage Survey in the Republic of Macedonia. USAID MK Connects Project.
6. State Statistical Office. (2007). ICT Use in Households, 2007. Ministry of Information Society of RM.
7. SMMRI. (2007). Public Opinion Poll Regarding Telecommunication Market in Macedonia. European Agency for Reconstruction, Technical Assistance to Telecommunication Sector Project.
8. State Statistical Office. (2008). ICT Use in Households, first quarter of 2008. Ministry of Information Society of RM.
9. Data from survey by Strategic Marketing and Media Research Institute published in Kapital (12.02.2009) Телефонија и интернет [Telephony and Internet].
10. Data from survey by GFK published by Total (12.02.2009). English translation.
11. Rating Agency. (2009). Audience Opinion Survey 2009. Broadcasting Council of RM. [In print.]
12. Microsoft EMEA. (04.2009). Europe logs on: European Internet trends of today and tomorrow.