Ströer generates record revenue in 2025, paving the way for its transition to AI-powered platform business

Ströer had a successful year in 2025, underscoring its prowess in combining data-driven media solutions, high reach, and powers of technological innovation – even in a challenging macroeconomic environment. Driven by DOOH, out-of-home advertising media gained further market share to account for a record 10.0% of the overall German market.

All in all, Ströer’s core OOH Media segment notched up revenue of EUR 989m, which was another record. DOOH was once again the key driver of growth, with its revenue growing significantly to stand at around EUR 400m.

One highlight of 2025 was the launch of the premium LED digital screen ‘The Whale’ in Hamburg. ‘The Whale’ – Europe’s largest LED screen – perfectly demonstrates Ströer’s ability to innovate consistently at pace and is testimony to the attractiveness of its portfolio.

At t-online, the combination of high-quality free-to-access content and three technical sales channels – desktop, mobile, and DOOH – mean that the t-online news portal has become a clear leader in terms of reach in the German market.

t-online’s strength is underscored by the fact that its reach was much higher in January and February 2026 than it had been in January and February 2024 despite Google’s AI Overviews having been rolled out in full in the first half of 2025. In numbers, t-online’s growth in reach was 10% in January and 13% in February.

In 2025, Ströer’s future-proofing centered on a fundamental strategy refresh against a backdrop of disruptive innovations in artificial intelligence (AI). AI will be a defining engine of transformation for Ströer going forward, enabling today’s advertising marketing business to be transformed into an AI-powered digital platform business.

Ströer already has the infrastructure, data, reach, and customer relationships and can now turn them into a platform-based ecosystem with the help of AI. Today’s largely independent marketing channels will be able to be woven into bespoke advertising products. On this basis, Ströer will in the near future be in a position to use the Ströer Ad Manager to automatically generate customized products and services for local and national customers that are firmly focused on achieving the communication goals of those customers.

The Ströer Ad Manager will be complemented by the AI-powered Public Mind analytics tool for planning and documenting the effectiveness of out-of-home advertising – with clearly defined metrics.

“AI will become an engine of transformation for our digital and analog infrastructure – especially in out-of-home advertising, but also in open web business. With the technological developments and AI innovations achieved in recent months, we can now implement a strategy, the key components of which we have been building for years. We will be able to use AI to bring together what are currently largely disparate marketing tools and integrate them into tailor-made solutions that meet our customers’ needs.

In the future the combination of Ströer Ad Manager as well as the Public Mind analytics tool will provide the impetus for sustainable and profitable growth in the age of AI. The Ströer Ad Manager will allow us to automatically configure offers that are strictly aligned with communication goals. At the same time, Public Mind will put us in a position to plan, manage, and document OOH campaigns with a greater focus on impact – using clearly defined metrics and not just on the basis of number of contacts and reach.

In local business, transitioning the current sale of advertising space to a platform business means media products can be configured flexibly according to occasion, place, time, and budget, and can be made available on a self-service or managed-service basis. This will enable us to achieve a manifold increase in the number of local customers from today’s figure of around 50,000 and put us in a much better position and we expect to exploit the potentials offered by more than 3 million SMEs in Germany.

US-based performance players with offerings that complement Ströer’s product portfolio have already established self-booking as standard in their digital performance businesses. Thanks to AI and Ströer’s extensive digital infrastructure, Ströer will be able to make targeted, customer-specific products easily bookable on a self-service basis.

In national business, the platform strategy will improve our competitive position because we can offer integrated products and services tailored to our customers’ requirements more efficiently across our media and product platforms – and because we will be able to sell campaigns with a heightened focus on verifiable impact metrics in the future. Furthermore, Ströer will be able to deploy AI to implement an efficient yield management system in order to further enhance utilization of its digital advertising media.

With a view to the aforementioned process of Ströer evolving into a digital platform business, Ströer has for the first time appointed a chief technology officer (CTO) focused on the core business. Sven Scheffler will take up this new role for the Group on March 1, 2026.

This transformation process fundamentally changes our operational leverage. Going forward, our revenue growth will not require a proportionate increase in headcount, benefiting instead from a structurally higher level of productivity. Over the next three to five years, we see considerable potential for efficiency gains that will lead to significantly higher margins, improved capital efficiency, and better free cash flow conversion. Against this backdrop, we are very confident about Ströer's continued profitable development in the coming years and accordingly expect an improvement in free cash flow,” comments Udo Müller, Co-CEO and founder of Ströer.

In 2025, the Digital & Dialog Media segment registered strong and steady growth. Revenue rose to EUR 892m and is testimony to a consistently high level of demand for digital premium environments and dialog-oriented services.

Ströer expanded its leading position in the open web and enhanced the integrated architecture of reach established through t-online. The interplay between desktop, mobile, and digital screen infrastructure creates a set-up that is unique in Europe, offering advertising customers greater reach, noticeably higher contact quality, and efficient targeting of specific audiences. Cross-media synergies boost traffic and enhance the appeal of the digital portfolio, which, with revenue of EUR 442m, is a reliable mainstay of the Group.

The dialog business also made a substantial contribution to the Group’s performance in 2025, growing to EUR 450m. Strong demand for high-quality sales and customer engagement solutions shows how effectively Ströer supports brands and companies across the entire spectrum of customer interaction.

Once again, the DaaS and E‑Commerce segment put in a mixed performance in 2025. Statista concentrated on refining its products for the age of AI. With its new Statista MCP server, Statista provides leading AI assistants and automation platforms with secure real-time access to more than a million verified datapoints from in excess of 20,000 different sources on over 80,000 topics. The seamless integration of reliable market and statistics data in AI-powered workflows is therefore becoming a reality and Statista is positioning itself as a key data partner in modern AI ecosystems. Despite being in this transitional phase, Statista notched up another revenue high of EUR 165m. Based on the factors described above, Statista expects business to continue to grow, with an improvement in free cash flow by a double-digit million amount.

AsamBeauty held up well in a challenging environment for consumer spending, generating more or less consistent retail revenue in leading drug stores. However, declines in TV sales as a result of changing media use weighed heavily on revenue that came in at around EUR 187m. All in all, Asam’s market position was robust despite the difficult backdrop.

All figures for 2025 are preliminary and have not yet been signed off by the auditors. The final figures will be communicated when the annual report is published on March 23, 2026.



Disclaimer

This press release contains ‘forward-looking statements’ regarding Ströer SE & Co. KGaA (‘Ströer’) or the Ströer Group, including assessments, estimates and forecasts regarding the financial position, business strategy, plans and objectives of management and the future business activities of Ströer or the Ströer Group. Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the results of operations, profitability, performance or achievements of Ströer or the Ströer Group to be materially different from any future results of operations, profitability, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release and are based on numerous assumptions that may also prove to be incorrect. Ströer makes no representation and assumes no liability with respect to the fair presentation, completeness, correctness, adequacy or accuracy of the information and assessments contained herein. The information contained in this press release is subject to change without notice. It may be incomplete or abbreviated and may not contain all the material information relating to Ströer or the Ströer Group. Ströer does not accept any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements or other information contained herein, either as a result of new information or future events or for other reasons.