Ströer and United Internet Media with strategic media cooperation plan

New planning reliability for advertisers and agencies: Ströer Out-of-Home Media AG, one of Europe’s leading out-of-home advertising companies, and United Internet Media AG, a leading marketer of digital media on the German and European advertising market and a pioneer in innovative online crossmedia solutions, are planning to enter into a strategic media partnership. A target-group-specific combination of the two companies’ range of marketing solutions is to be at the center of the partnership. The plan is for the crossmedia interconnection of the companies’ portfolios to make it possible for the first time to use out-of-home and online media to appeal to precisely defined, specific target groups, established on the basis of consolidated media use data, easily and in such a way as to make planning an integrated strategy no problem. The new range of crossmedia services will be the fourth in the context of the “Crossmedia enabled by Publishers” series produced by United Internet Media working with leading marketers from conventional media.

“Demand&Activation”: Optimized integrated out-of-home/online media solutions Out-of-home advertising has a powerful effect on unconscious, spontaneous decisions to buy a product. This is due both to the fact that the brain thinks largely in images and to the positive overall mood people tend to have when confronted with the messages relayed by out-of-home media. Both of these factors promote the more enduring memorization of brand images from out-of-home advertising than of those from other media, an effect confirmed by recent neuromarketing studies. Online media, on the other hand, are outstanding at activating and reinforcing implicit preferences, sharpening and deepening them by means of information the user can enhance interactively, and transforming them into the impulse to buy without the user having to encounter another medium to gain such an impulse. On top of this, both media types are highly suited to regional or local deployment.

This multi-faceted way in which the two media types complement each other’s effects is what Ströer and United Internet Media are aiming to consistently harness in the design of their integrated Demand&Activation crossmedia solutions. The two companies will be focusing on the type of concept-related and creative interconnection of campaigns already practiced by many agencies and advertisers and implemented in a range of successful examples. Additionally, they will work on optimizing their approaches to booking in crossmedia. Using crossmedia approaches to address congruent target groups, which can be specified and targeted precisely by means of microgeographic data in real and digital spaces, can extend out-of-home advertising contact into the online arena and thus efficiently strengthen its desired impact as advertising (multiplying effects). Further, sets of images seen in out-of-home settings (“demand”) can be transferred online into concrete demand-related actions (“activation”). Bringing these two media types together allows advertisers to pursue all their communication aims in both media throughout the process of a consumer’s making a decision to buy.

In keeping with the “Crossmedia enabled by Publishers” guiding idea, the strategy intends to provide agencies and advertisers with these optimized crossmedia booking approaches ready to use and easily and quickly implementable for their planning. This will empower advertisers to plan and manage their campaigns effectively and efficiently at the interface of online and out-of-home media.

“The planned strategic partnership is our response to the increasing fragmentation of media, which demands a target-group-oriented crossmedia solution. This new approach to planning is intended to give advertising companies and media agencies, the opportunity to focus and maximize their campaigns’ impact”, says Christian von den Brincken, director of marketing and strategy at Ströer. “In United Internet Media, we now have an experienced expert in online targeting on board – the perfect partner for crossmedia cooperation”.

Matthias Ehrlich, member of the Management Board at United Internet Media, explains: “Crossmedia campaigns are an essential part of effective brand management today. As innovation leader in online-crossmedia combinations which can be planned and booked within an integrated system, we believe in the characteristic strengths of each media genre and are focusing on harnessing the benefits of each specific advertising medium and combining them in a way which will produce synergy effects. Our aim is to provide the best possible support to agencies and advertisers in the planning and implementation of their crossmedia campaigns by supplying product approaches on the basis of consolidated media use data – “Crossmedia enabled by Publishers”. For us, Ströer is not only the most innovative out-of-home marketer who will support our online-crossmedia combination formats, but also a partner who shares our publisher-based, quality-focused approach to developing high-performance, target-group-specific media solutions.”