Europe Media companies becoming extinct in the Digital World

Back in the day, Europe used to line a few of the most powerful media brands.  But the digital migration is not kind to the old continent.  Right now, with the exception of a handful of upstarts, Europe is essentially not existent beyond its own borders.

Case in point: the latest Comscore lists just came out.  G/M/S clearly top the list, followed by WikiMedia and Facebook.  The first Chinese site (Baidu) clocks in at #15, whilst Sina corp is at #18.  The first European sites are Orange and DailyMotion at 34 and 37 ... although if you add the traffic we get from http://dailymotion.virgilio.it/gb, which you should, DailyMotion is in fact the #1 European brand online.

 

Supermoine- Brought to you but europe's #1 online brand :-)

 

Are European media companies missing the web ?  You bet.

If you look at traditional media companies, you will find giants like Vivendi, Bertelsmann, Lagardere, WPP or Reed.  Running this study in April 2008, our friends at Jefferies found that 8 of the top 25 media groups were European, representing 22% of revenues, whilst 2 were Asian.  If you look at global new media audiences, you found 4 European groups representing 3% of audience !!

If I believe the new Comscore April numbers, we now have ZERO European groups in the top 25 and and a mere 5 in the top 50 (Orange, DailyMotion, Terra-Telefonica, Spill Games and BBC).  I don't know how much of an international audience BBC has, but basically we have legacy leaders and two transnational upstart companies.

This analysis also applies if you look at the proportion of media revenues coming from online, which is much higher for US companies than their European counterparts (in April 2008, it was 10% for US players and a mere 3.8% for the Europeans).  Whilst France is busy passing backwards anti-piracy laws under intense lobbying from its industry, the war is being lost.

In a few words, the digital disruption is rocking the content world and wiping out the European media brands.

 

<--- European Media, soon coming to you on a niche pay-per-view channel

Comments

[Yves (BeeBole)]

I wouldn't take the audience numbers as a sign of success or failure.

The English spoken market is huge in comparison to the European medias targeted markets.

Language is a big barrier, but bashing companies because they will never be able to scale as a US company would do is not good, unless you expect all those local companies to grow big in the US just to pay the bill in their initial local market.

Still, I totally agree with you that the old continent medias a far behind in terms of the digital world acceptance.

Being Belgian, I have met several times Damien Van Achter, working as the digital evangelist for the French speaking national TV.

He is clearly saying that's is not easy to change the mentality inside, still he succeeded to have a lab put online: http://www.rtbf.be/labs/ (in French).

But it is far from what CNN is doing jumping with ease on every new digital trend and marketing it on TV constantly.

[lkratz]

Classic management motto (in french):

Tu viens avec une solution ou tu fais parti du problème ?

;)

[Henry Yates]

Which European companies do you think have the potential to break through in the next 3-5 years? Do you think any of the old European media cos have a shot at reinventing themselves?