Market Overview

On the following pages you will find a description of the radio landscape in some 15 European countries offering a brief look into how different markets are developing and what opportunities radio offers across Europe.

In addition to these general market profiles, a restricted access area for egta members offers a more detailed overview of national advertising markets, major market players, legislative background, pricing policies etc. Though not exhaustive the extensive overview of figures is unique in Europe and represents the data used by radio professionals in the respective country.


Belgium North

Contrasts between North and South

What characterises the Belgian radio landscape is the presence of three communities, Dutch-speaking, French-speaking and German-speaking with the main differences geographically defined between the North (Flemish) and the South (Wallon).

The North was very much in the hands of a public service monopoly until 2001 when three commercial stations were launched – Contact 2, Q-Music and 4FM. In 2007 an additional private station – Nostalgie – started broadcasting in Belgium North. With Nostalgie already broadcasting in the South of Belgium, it is now the only private station with national coverage (Q-Music and 4FM broadcast only in the North of the country). These stations experienced fast growth upon their launch and the market now sees private radio with roughly 42 percent and public radio with 58 percent share of adspend.

There are four sales houses to sell nine channels across Belgium North. VAR, IP Plurimedia , the Q-Group and VMM. Total advertising investments grew 2 percent in 2009. The fastest growing medium was Internet with +10 percent, followed by TV with +6 percent.

Stable adspend

With a total share of 9,4 percent of the advertising spend, the Belgian radio market is one of the strongest in Europe. This is in part due to the many joint initiatives undertaken by radio sales houses across Belgium. Grouped together as “The Radio Group” the four major Belgian radio sales houses have launched a variety of projects geared toward promoting the medium radio: The Radio Academy (workshops for creative agencies on how to make effective and creative radio spots), Radio Essentials (a tour of media agencies) and the Radio Inspiration Day (event for promoting radio to advertisers) are just some of the events aimed to promote the medium radio.

Advertisers are testing the creative boundaries and increasingly looking toward non-spot opportunities such as games and events.

Synergies between Radio and Internet

The Radio Group is working on leveraging the complementarities between these two media and creating cross-media opportunities. Internet radio is not yet very strong on the market but is growing. In Belgium there are currently about 200 web radios almost all of which are simulcast programmes from major radio stations and not stand-alone web stations as such.

Looking toward a digital future, public broadcasters in Belgium support DAB. The public broadcasters started DAB (Digital Audience Broadcasting) some years ago and are now hoping for increasing sales of DAB-receivers on the consumer market.

Pioneering the Portable People Meter

The Q-Group and VAR are the 2 sales houses which work with Portable People Meter (PPM) - a method of passive audience measurement. The results gathered by this method are not yet presented to the market and are currently used only for internal analyses on listening behaviour. From a commercial point of view it is difficult to use these figures if not everyone works with the same system.

Restriced accessMembers Only Section (Restricted Access)
This section contains more specific information on the market; including overviews of the market players, adspend, media mix, household equipment, pricing policies, seasonality indexes, legislation concerning advertising placement, as well as audience measurement technical factors.