Emerging DooH competition

The Berlin DooH start-up Hygh rents out digital signage screens to hotels, bakeries and restaurants. And challenges with its new offering the established media owner Ströer and Wall. The business idea was born out of frustration with the existing DooH offering of the big players in the industry. In the meantime, the startup started deploying its own display network and is planning a large-scale rollout.

The DooH salse platform of the Berlin start-up Hygh offers DooH programmatic advertising for small and medium-sized companies. The DooH media-owner, which has around 50 employees and is headed by the three founders Vincent Müller, Fritz Frey and Antonius Link, started initially as a consultancy for small investors in the crypto-currency sector. The business concept changed, however, when the three planned to promote their services via DooH at Ströer und Wall.

„At the first attempt to book a DooH campaign, it was made clear to us that 50,000 euros would not be a sufficient budget. We were not even invited to a meeting“, co-founder Fritz Frey told invidis. „When we tried to book again a short time later – this time with a budget of 100.000 Euro – we at least had the first round of talks. But we were quite disappointed by the offering. Inflexible options for scheduling campaign, long lead time for the creatives and missing options to adapt the creatives during the campaign. The startup was frustrated with the predefined packages. In addition, the whole booking process took a long time with many e-mails, phone calls and personal conversations – instantly booking a DooH campaign was not possible. „That is why we created Hygh. We wanted to break up the existing structures of DooH advertising,“ says Frey.

DooH campaigns for SMBs  

About two years ago the team changed its business plan and started developing a DooH platform and app that would run on most smart TVs and professionals displays. The idea: to enable small and medium businesses to book DooH campaigns fast, easy, and affordable. And at the same time enabling businesses to generate revenue by placing digital signage displays in their shop windows.

The company’s brand Hygh was born rather coincidentally on the search for something young and modern. In addition, the domain hygh.tech was still available. The ambitious goal is to become „the“ booking tool for digital spaces. Hygh focuses on city quarters: Every small business can set up a screen somewhere in the store and generate income by placing advertising – whether in form of a national brand campaign or from the business down the street. „A baker, for example, can take a picture of his fresh rolls and upload the picture via the app. A content creator briefly places a relevant text next to the image and this is then played 100 meters around a corner on a screen of a hairdresser – every morning between 7 and 9 a.m., but only when the sun is shining. It’s flexible and uncomplicated,“ explains Frey.

Expansion of own media network 

Besides leasing dooh screens to business owners, the start-up is also building its own DooH network by placing screens on business premises with high footfall. Hygh has currently installed around 250 55-inch high brightness displays from Samsung in Berlin. The self-developed media player software runs on Samsung’s Tizen SoC platform, connectivity is usually enabled with 4G USB-stick. The screens are managed remotely by Hygh via Samsung’s MagicInfo platform and brightness is adjusted in the evening. The largest customer is currently the state-owned Lottery. More than half of the displays in Berlin are booked regularly to advertise the jackpot numbers. One of the main reasons for Lottery is the close vicinity of many screens to stores selling lottery tickets – and because the content can be easily adjusted within minutes after the draw.

In order to be allowed to place its own DooH displays, Hygh pays rent to small businesses. The start-up acquires suitable locations with the support of location scouts. New locations must meet a catalogue of requirements before they are chosen for a display installation. In addition to the rent, the businesses are reimbursed for electricity costs; and DooH advertising is scheduled individually to avoid campaigns being played which compete with the location owner.

In June 2020 Hygh launched its booking platform 1.0 for its own display network in Berlin. It is designed to make DooH as easy and user-friendly as possible – accessible to everyone. This is certainly a double-edged sword for the start-up: The feature set of the platform has been deliberately limited. More professional users might miss certain features.

By the end of the year 2020, Hygh plans to double the number of its own screens in Berlin to 500. In addition, the rollout in Cologne is to start with another 250 displays. However, Covid-19 makes the roll-out more difficult. „It will take just six to eight weeks to implement a rollout with 250 devices. By the end of 2020, we want to have 2,500 screens installed internationally, at least when the COVID19 pandemic does not hinder our expansion,“ Frey describes.

Before the start of the pandemic, the start-up regularly held neighborhood get-togethers, by inviting small businesses and presenting the DooH platform. The events are currently suspended. But after the crisis Hygh is ready to continue disrupting the DooH market.