German out-of-home company Ströer achieved a record financial year in 2023. Consolidated revenue improved by eight per cent to EUR 1.91 billion, the highest revenue in the Group’s history. The record result for 2023 is driven by a 28 per cent increase in DooH and more than 99 per cent in programmatic revenue.
Ströer was the company that brought Digital-out-of-Home to Germany 30 years ago. The large videowall format was and is still called Infoscreen. For a long time, it was just a sideshow in the somewhat dusty out-of-home market. Now, DooH has turned into an absolute success story. With a 28 per cent increase in revenue in the past year, the market leader Ströer was able to benefit disproportionately from the public video boom.
The Cologne-based company was able to increase its consolidated revenue by eight per cent from EUR 1.77 billion to EUR 1.91 billion, thus achieving the highest revenue in the Media Group’s history. Profit (EBITDA adjusted) also grew by five per cent to EUR 569 million.
Ströer’s core business, comprising analogue and digital out-of-home advertising, defied the overall advertising market trend in the past 2023 financial year, experiencing revenue growth of 8 percent (compared to 0.3% in 2023), with the fourth quarter showing the strongest momentum, marking a 13 percent increase.
In 2023 as a whole, DooH acted as a key growth and revenue driver. Ströer achieved a 28 percent increase in DooH sales and doubled programmatic DooH sales.
DooH is Booming
Ströer assigns the success of digital to one particular factor: the increasing digitalization has largely irradicated the historical barriers to using Out-of-Home (OoH) for advertisers. With programmatic buying options, DooH is increasingly being booked in combination with online media in near real time. This transformation is turning Out-of-Home from a supplementary medium into a central component of many media strategies.
The market share of OoH in the overall advertising market rose to a new historic high of 8.6 percent in 2023. Looking at the long-term trend over 15 years, the average annual growth of the OoH segment exceeds the advertising market by a factor of four. In addition, DooH has established itself as one of the strongest growth drivers of the advertising market as a whole. According to Ströer, this development is supported by the increasing importance of the carbon footprint for advertising clients. Outdoor advertising and DooH in particular are by far the most energy-efficient and resource-conserving media in the media mix.
Beauty Subsidiary also Achieving High Growth
In addition to DooH, Ströer’s other Group divisions also contributed to revenue growth. Asam Beauty, with growth of around 28 percent, generated revenue of more than EUR 200 million for the first time (2023: EUR 202 million). This is important for Ströer as the company is considering selling or “spinning-off” of the beauty subsidiary.
“The fiscal year 2023 was very successful for our company, and the remarkably good fourth quarter in particular, with out-of-home advertising growth of 13 percent, clearly shows the very good development of our core business. In the past year, we saw many customers increase their share of out-of-home advertising – and the DooH offering is often the reason for this, as our advertising customers can address their target groups flexibly, quickly and in a targeted manner”, says Christian Schmalzl, Co-CEO of Ströer.
“The fact that the other business segments also made a substantial contribution to our successful development with growth of ten and around 20 per cent respectively confirms our OoH Plus strategy.” He expects Ströer to continue the OoH momentum and even to further accelerate growth. “We expect up to 15 percent organic growth in our core business. In addition, we expect Group revenue growth for the year as a whole to be significantly higher than the organic revenue growth in financial year 2023 (+7.5 per cent).”
