Ströer starts a worldwide media innovation with its Out-of-Home-Channel

• The first digital out-of-home network in Germany includes, as of today, 108 train stations visited by more than 31 million consumers per week
• Once the roll-out is finished, the complete network will consist of over 1000 digital displays in the 200 largest German train stations

Germany's leading provider of out-of-home advertising is celebrating a premiere: The Ströer Group is the first company worldwide to offer digital moving image displays to its customers in Germany with relevant coverage at the top German train stations. This week, the company begins the official start of sales of advertising time in time-lines on these new screens, which have been placed in recent months in the largest German train stations. The company is making a double digit million investment in the new project.

The large screens in full HD quality generally stand perpendicular to the direction of pedestrians. They are connected in parallel and were installed in close and successful cooperation with Deutsche Bahn in the train stations of cities such as Berlin, Stuttgart, Munich and Frankfurt. In recent years, Germany's large train stations, with their long distance train services and their developed shopping areas, have become attractive transportation hubs in Europe. Till now, the new screens provide information and advertising at 108 train stations visited by more than 31 million consumers per week, which is more than 4.5 million per day. However, the network will be significantly expanded and concentrated in the next several weeks. Thereafter, the number of achievable contacts will climb up to 60 million. As a result, the advertising industry is now able to reach the most mobile, highly skilled and attractive target audiences with moving images at the touch-point train station.

“Once again, Ströer was able to prove its ability to innovate. We now offer our customers in Germany a new dimension in advertising; starting now, content updated on a daily basis can be activated in real time. In that way, appropriate advertisements accurately reach their target audiences, e.g. at lunchtime, just before a shopping trip in the afternoon or when there is a sudden onset of hay fever weather,” is how Udo Müller, the company CEO, describes the new service. “In particular, we expect great interest from retailers where daily flexibility is often needed, meaning that we can use this new technology to gain access to completely new customers for our company. Huge contact numbers with excellent coverage in top target audiences and unusually good contact quality — those are the cornerstones of our new Out-of Home-Channel.”

The quality of the contact with the target audience is especially important for the success of the Out-of-Home-Channel. The University of Luxembourg, together with Germany's leading media agency MediaCom, completed a large study, in which they found that consumers in train stations are more interested and receptive to advertising messages. In addition, they remain on average more than 15 minutes at the station.

Behind the digital displays with their high recognition value, which can be programmed regionally and locally, is an elaborate system that is managed from the editorial department at the Munich headquarters of the Ströer subsidiary Infoscreen. Stefan Kuhlow's team of over 80 employees has gathered 10 years of experience with Infoscreen's elaborate system from its installations in public transportation systems; they manage the system, conduct marketing activities and provide remote maintenance support.

“The entire team,” so Udo Müller, “did a fantastic job with our partners at Deutsche Bahn, and we are all very excited about this historic occasion for out-of-home advertising and the overall media market. We are particularly proud that we were able to realize this innovative concept with such good results in our home market, since in recent decades Germany has not been particularly successful internationally in the field of media innovation. The Out-of-Home-Channel was awarded the renowned German Red Dot Design Award, a well deserved accomplishment. The new channel is as large as a poster, as flexible as a TV and offers tremendous potential. Advertisers such as agencies are just as excited about the many new creative features that the network offers on both the planning and the creative side. The future of out-of-home communication has begun with the Out-of-Home-Channel, and we at Ströer are already looking forward to even more new and exciting possibilities in the near future.”