Zattoo today named Ströer as the exclusive external sales partner for its video and connected TV inventory in Germany, handing one of the country's largest media houses control over a supply of addressable big-screen impressions that spans smart TVs, PCs and laptops, streaming players, smartphones and tablets. According to Zattoo, the arrangement marks a significant step in the company's growth strategy inside what it describes as a fast-expanding CTV market.

The announcement, dated June 15, 2026, comes as Germany's television landscape continues a structural shift away from linear broadcasting. Video streaming now reaches 87% of Germans aged 16 and above, narrowly surpassing traditional broadcast television's 86% reach for the first time - a milestone documented when Bitkom published its survey results ahead of the IFA trade fair in September 2024. Weekly streaming use among Germans stands at 77%, a figure that has climbed 13 percentage points over the past three years, according to Nielsen data.

What the partnership covers

Under the agreement, Ströer Media Solutions takes responsibility for selling Zattoo's German inventory to advertisers and agencies. According to Zattoo, ad delivery will occur in "high-quality video environments," with a particular emphasis on the large screen. The commercial logic is straightforward: Zattoo's platform attracts viewers who have moved their television consumption to internet-connected devices, and Ströer brings the sales infrastructure and agency relationships to convert that audience into advertising revenue.

Zattoo's device footprint is broad. According to the company, the platform is available on smart TVs, PCs and laptops, streaming players, smartphones and tablets. That multi-device presence gives advertisers flexibility to reach the same household across contexts - from a 65-inch screen in the living room to a mobile device during a commute. In the addressable TV market, cross-device consistency matters because it allows frequency capping and sequential messaging that pure broadcast channels cannot support.

Ströer itself is a substantial force in German media. According to Zattoo's announcement, the company employs approximately 13,700 people across around 100 locations and generated revenue of 2.08 billion euros in fiscal year 2025. It is listed in the MDAX segment of Deutsche Börse. Its media portfolio spans out-of-home advertising, digital and dialog media, and data and e-commerce - what the company calls an "OOH plus" strategy. The digital and dialog media segment, which encompasses online advertising and content revenues, generated 231.0 million euros in revenue in the first quarter of 2026, up 12% year on year, according to first-quarter results published in May 2026.

Voices from both sides

Three executives are named in the announcement, and their comments illuminate the strategic rationale from each organisation's perspective.

Tina Rodriguez, interim chief executive at Zattoo, frames the deal in terms of market positioning: "Connected TV is increasingly developing into the central digital video channel. With Ströer we are gaining a strong partner to develop our advertising business in Germany in a targeted manner and to open up the potential of our high-quality CTV inventory even better. The partnership is an important component of our growth strategy and significantly strengthens our position in the CTV market."

Klaus Nadler, chief sales officer at Zattoo, adds detail on what Ströer brings to the table beyond revenue generation: "Ströer shares our high quality and innovation standards. We see our collaboration as a real strategic partnership: Ströer has great marketing expertise, a strong market presence and extensive experience in the digital video sector. Together we want to advance innovative solutions in the CTV market and open up the potential of connected TV for advertisers even better."

From the buyer side, Marc Schmitz, chief operating officer at Ströer Media Solutions, positions the deal as an expansion of what CTV can deliver for Ströer's advertiser clients: "With Zattoo we are expanding our portfolio with an established streaming offering with high relevance in the connected TV market. CTV is rapidly developing into a central component of modern video strategies. With Zattoo we give our clients even more targeted access to addressable TV inventory in a data-driven, digital environment. The exclusive marketing fulfills our aspiration to make advertising along shifting TV use more precise, efficient and measurable."

The framing around precision and measurability is significant. Measurement has long been a contested issue in CTV advertising - one that the broader industry is working to resolve through technical standardisation and new attribution infrastructure.

Zattoo: company background and market position

Zattoo was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Zurich, with a second office in Berlin. According to the company, it employs more than 220 people and serves several million monthly users across Europe. In Switzerland, Germany and Austria, Zattoo distributes popular TV channels in HD and Full HD quality alongside a library of video-on-demand content. Since 2012, the platform has also operated a business-to-business arm that licenses its technology to media companies and network operators globally as a TV-as-a-Service product.

The Swiss TX Group - described as a digital hub and network of media and platforms - has held a stake in Zattoo since 2008 and has held more than 50% since 2019. That ownership relationship ties Zattoo into one of the larger Swiss media ecosystems, giving it both financial backing and strategic context within a broader content and distribution network. Since 2021, Zattoo has also held ClimatePartner certification, reflecting a stated commitment to climate neutrality.

The platform's content mix matters for advertisers. Alongside live TV delivered in HD and Full HD, Zattoo offers video-on-demand titles and has expanded its on-demand library significantly - the Zattoothek, launched to German and Austrian users, includes more than 25,000 on-demand titles drawn from FAST channels and broadcasters including ProSiebenSat.1. That content breadth increases dwell time and, by extension, the volume of ad inventory available to Ströer for monetisation.

The German CTV market context

The timing of this announcement reflects real movement in how Germans consume television. Streaming surpassed traditional TV in Germany for the first time in September 2024, according to Bitkom data, with 87% of Germans aged 16 and above streaming versus 86% watching broadcast. That reversal, which came just one year after the situation was still the other direction, signals an acceleration rather than a gradual drift. Traditional TV had 92% reach as recently as 2023; by 2024, it had dropped to 86%.

For advertisers in Germany, the shift creates both opportunity and complexity. RTL Group's digital advertising revenue surged 27% in the first half of 2025, while traditional TV advertising fell 6.9% over the same period. That divergence illustrates the budget reallocation already under way. Amazon Prime Video reached 17 million monthly German users with its ad-supported tier as of June 2025, a figure announced at the company's first German advertising upfront event in Cologne.

FAST channels have added another dimension. FAST household adoption across Europe reached 27% in March 2026, according to a pan-European study by ShowHeroes and Omnicom Media Netherlands that surveyed 4,377 respondents aged 18 to 65 across six markets. The research found that 59% of European households want to reduce their streaming subscription costs, creating structural demand for free, ad-supported alternatives. Zattoo's own Zattoothek integrates FAST channel content, positioning the platform to capture some of this audience shift.

Measurement infrastructure has also been advancing in Germany. Nielsen launched CTV tracking within its Ad Intel advertising intelligence platform in Germany in August 2025, covering platforms including Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, YouTube, Disney+, RTL+, DAZN, Sky, Joyn, WOW, Waipu.tv and Pluto TV. That expansion gave advertisers a cross-platform view of competitive spending for the first time. The Zattoo-Ströer deal arrives into a market where the measurement tools to evaluate CTV campaign performance are maturing rapidly.

Why this deal matters for the advertising market

For buyers, the deal creates a single point of contact for Zattoo's inventory in Germany. That simplification matters in a market where CTV supply is highly fragmented across platforms, each with different technical infrastructure, pricing models and reporting standards. CTV's conversion gap - the difficulty of linking streaming ad exposure to measurable outcomes - remains an active challenge for the sector, and consolidating inventory under a large, experienced sales house can accelerate the development of standardised campaign workflows.

Ströer's existing client base gives Zattoo access to a broad pool of German advertisers that already use Ströer's OOH and digital channels. For brands already planning campaigns across Ströer's digital out-of-home network - which holds approximately 10% of the German advertising market - adding addressable CTV inventory through the same commercial relationship reduces friction significantly.

The emphasis on the "big screen" in the announcement is not incidental. Research published in November 2025 found that 43% of large advertisers planned to increase spending on addressable TV in 2026, according to a Go Addressable survey of more than 300 US marketing professionals. While that figure reflects US market sentiment, it is consistent with the European trajectory. CTV's share of media budgets has doubled from 14% in 2023 to 28% in 2025 as marketers shift spend toward channels with household-level targeting precision.

Smart TVs remain the dominant access device. Nielsen data shows smart TVs are the preferred platform for CTV access among 61% of German users who use such services, followed by streaming sticks at 29%. Zattoo's deep integration with smart TV operating systems - the company began making live TV available on Samsung and LG smart TVs more than a decade ago - positions its inventory squarely in that dominant device category.

Addressability and data in practice

The Ströer announcement specifically highlights "addressable" inventory, a term that carries technical meaning in the ad industry. Addressable TV advertising enables targeting at the household or device level using data signals - as distinct from broad demographic targeting that treats all viewers of a given programme or channel the same way. Zattoo's platform, operating as an internet-connected service rather than a traditional broadcast system, generates the signal data that makes addressable targeting possible.

For Ströer, adding Zattoo's inventory extends its data-driven advertising offering beyond the browser and out-of-home environments it has historically monetised. The company's Digital and Dialog Media segment already operates a range of data-driven targeting products. CTV inventory is a natural extension because it combines the scale of television reach with the individual-level data signals of digital channels.

Addressable TV measurement techniques have grown more sophisticated in Germany over recent years. Utiq's partnership with Visoon in July 2025 introduced consent-based telco-powered identifiers for HbbTV and CTV environments, enabling cross-platform measurement while maintaining data protection compliance. In parallel, Prime Video was integrated into AGF Germany's measurement system via Nielsen in November 2025, adding another major streaming platform to the country's official audience measurement infrastructure. Zattoo's inventory, distributed through Ströer's established commercial relationships, now sits within this maturing ecosystem.

Practical implications for campaign planning

Agencies planning German video campaigns now have an additional channel through which to access Zattoo's inventory without negotiating directly with the platform. That matters particularly for smaller and mid-sized agencies that rely on consolidated media house relationships rather than building bespoke platform partnerships.

The announcement does not specify whether Ströer will make Zattoo inventory available programmatically - through demand-side platforms - or primarily through direct insertion orders. That technical detail will determine how accessible the inventory is to performance-focused buyers who rely on real-time bidding infrastructure. The reference to "data-driven environments" and "precision" in Schmitz's statement suggests programmatic access is part of the long-term vision, even if the initial phase of the partnership focuses on establishing commercial and operational processes.

Creative adaptation remains a persistent challenge in CTV advertising. Research published in July 2025 showed that 72% of marketers reuse or slightly modify assets across social media and CTV platforms, while only 25% develop tailored creative for both channels. CTV is technically a television environment, which means it responds best to television-style creative - high-quality audio, cinematic framing, cohesive narratives and larger text elements. Buyers activating Zattoo inventory through Ströer will need to ensure creative assets are appropriate for the big-screen context to realise the channel's performance potential.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Zattoo, a Zurich-based TV streaming platform founded in 2005 with more than 220 employees and several million monthly users across Europe, and Ströer, a German media company with approximately 13,700 employees and 2.08 billion euros in fiscal 2025 revenue, listed in the MDAX.

What: Zattoo has appointed Ströer Media Solutions as the exclusive external sales partner for its video and connected TV advertising inventory in Germany. Ströer will sell access to Zattoo's addressable big-screen inventory - covering smart TVs, PCs and laptops, streaming players, smartphones and tablets - to German advertisers and agencies.

When: The partnership was announced on June 15, 2026.

Where: The agreement applies to the German market. Zattoo operates from Zurich and Berlin; Ströer is headquartered in Cologne and operates approximately 100 locations across Germany.

Why: Zattoo is seeking to accelerate its advertising revenue in Germany by leveraging Ströer's established sales infrastructure, agency relationships and 13,700-strong workforce, while Ströer is extending its portfolio into addressable CTV inventory at a moment when streaming has overtaken linear television in Germany and CTV's share of media budgets is growing rapidly. The deal reflects a broader structural realignment of German television advertising toward internet-delivered, data-driven channels.