Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining our H1 2021 results call today. Together with our entire board, Christian, Henning, and Christian, we will present the financials for the first half of 2021 and give you more information about the current business dynamics across all segments, but especially Out-of-Home media, in light of a normalizing Out-of-Home market. Our financial development in H1 across the various businesses and sub-segments. We wanted to take the opportunity to make a deeper dive into the product and platform development of Statista before we close the presentation with the outlook for Q3 and the full year, including an update of our ESG initiatives. The first half of this year was unsurprisingly driven by the dynamics of the pandemic and especially the lockdown measures of the government. We talk about six months, of which more than five were spent facing massive restrictions of public life.
Our strategic model, OOH-plus, clearly paid off in the crisis. Especially at the end of April, we focused on protecting our core business and its key levers for the future. We managed costs carefully but made sure not to harm any crucial relationships with partners or key initiatives like digitization or local sales. From May onwards, and already before the end of the lockdown, we got back to full speed on sales as well as portfolio development and digital rollout. Definitely also a key reason why already at the end of H1, we could see pre-COVID Out-of-Home levels and even stronger public video numbers. The non-Out-of-Home businesses, our Plus segments, Digital, and Dialogue Media, as well as DAS and e-commerce, have seen two really strong quarters and were operating unimpressed or even supported by COVID-19.
The business diversification across media segments within one country was definitely a resilient setup in the crisis. Since the advertising market shows more vitality again, the demand for digital media as well as tech and data-driven solutions is even stronger than pre-COVID, and this should also give us more midterm tailwind for our specific and very digital-focused setup. Our leading Out-of-Home position , furthermore, helps us gain market share when advertisers come back and focus on premium and digital solutions from the larger players, us and JCDecaux. We already started accelerating our infrastructure development plans towards more roadside screens. At the end of H1, we see all sales channels, programmatic, national key account, and regional, as well as local sales, back at full speed and optimistic for H2. The results for the first half of 2021 once again reflect the advantages of our globally unique positioning with OOH+.
Robust performance in the challenging environment of the first five months of the year due to the massive restrictions of public life and accelerated growth in a recovering market environment. In addition to the sound performance of our content-based businesses, dialogue marketing, as well as of our DAS and e-commerce activities, Statista and Asam, Out-of-Home contributed its share to the strong performance. Reported revenues in the first half of 2021 for the group stand at EUR 686 million, up 8% compared to the prior -year period. Organic revenue was at a comparable level with 8.9%, or 23 percentage points above the level of H1 2020. The adjusted EBITDA increased by 5% to EUR 180 million following the overall revenue development. Our adjusted EBIT benefited from a better operational performance and a slightly lower D&A volume.
Due to the lower comparative value of the previous year, adjusted EBIT improved overproportionally by 36% from EUR 35 million-EUR 48 million. Adjusted net income accelerated overproportionally as well and was up by 48% from EUR 18 million-EUR 27 million. Operating cash flow the first six months was solid at EUR 120 million. Some EUR 20 million lower compared to H1 2020 due to higher receivable levels triggered by the overall higher business volume in the current reporting period. Driven by lower CapEx spend in the first quarter of the year due to saving effects, CapEx for the first half was EUR 38 million or 26% less compared to the same period in 2020.
For the second half of the year, we will again accelerate the ramp-up of our digital footprint, especially for digital roadside screens, and expect a full-year CapEx spend at least on the prior year level. Let me zoom a little bit into our segments to highlight some initiatives and results that also form the foundation for the rest of the year and our midterm perspectives. COVID ultimately is just a bump in our road, as we see all long-term business drivers fully intact. Our market share in Out-of-Home is based on the latest and most reliable data from the German Advertising Federation, ZAW: 63%. Besides our unique public video product, we currently have 748 roadside screens live and expect to see the crucial 1,000 at the very beginning of next year.
Together with JCDecaux and the Out-of-Home Association, we are just launching dynamic audiences for digital roadside inventory and pre-marketing for the new nationwide network to start from September. Local sales order book stand is at +28% versus the prior year. Our pipeline for 2022 and the following years is intact. Programmatic represents, at the moment, 43% of our public video revenue. This gives us interesting opportunities once we open our roadside network also for that sales channel. In our Digital and Dialog Media segment, t-online.de is with its content offering, excluding the email platform, the number one news website since mid -Q2. We see a strong and sustainable traffic development across all our publishing assets and verticals.
Third -party sales, with its 360 monetization model for our publishers, bundles roughly a third of the revenues of all German publishing assets, and programmatic and data revenue count here for 52% of the total. Both our contact centers and door-to-door have again grown the customer base via our group key account access and have optimized operational KPIs, although the employment market gets more challenging at the moment. DACH and e-commerce have been slightly outperforming our expectations in H1. Statista's top-line growth is also fueled by optimized churn and net revenue retention, improved traffic and sales funnel management, and strong product improvements, which Christian will show in more detail later in our presentation.
Asam's momentum is driven by the unchanged dynamics of e-commerce. We have kicked off this year's planned investments of EUR 5 million into new markets like the U.S., France, and Poland, as well as the enhanced live video sales channel. Our current order book for Q3 shows that the achievements of H1 also convert into a strong start for H2. To give you better orientation about the business performance, we look at the comps of both 2019 and 2020. Out-of-Home media revenue is in the range of +29% to +28% versus 2020 and around 2019 levels, up 5%. Especially national sales and public video show the best recovery dynamics at the moment. Digital and Dialog Media stand around 10% higher versus 2020 and 17% higher versus 2019. The total online business as well as our contact centers perform strongly. Door-to-door is robust against extremely tough comps from last year.
The Ranger had massive catch-up effects as he couldn't sell most of Q2 2020. DACH and e-commerce in Q3 are currently fully in line with what we have delivered in the last quarters. Between 30%-35% growth versus last year and 68%-75% growth versus 2019. Even if Out-of-Home is over the pre-COVID level in Q3 so far, it's worth having a look at different products and client clusters, as the picture isn't fully consistent yet. In some areas, we are already growing significantly versus the pre-COVID baseline. In other areas, we still have the potential to catch up, especially once the pandemic is really over. Clearly above the pre-COVID are roadside screens, public video, our retail media around supermarkets, and our signage media. From a customer cluster view, small local clients, e-commerce, media, and the public sector are currently extremely dynamic.
Around the pre-COVID levels, we see billboards, trailers, street furniture, and our service business around Out-of-Home products. Looking at clients, it's the regional portfolio, automotive, telco, finance, FMCG, and food that have really recovered from the pandemic. Still below pre-COVID levels is the analog inventory in the public transport locations, Culture Media and Columns, Ambient media in locations like airports, fitness studios, or restaurants, as well as our international Out-of-Home business. We see similar catch-up potential with our event clients, customers in high -investment categories, traditional retail, and health. Just to round up positive outlook for our core business. The latest Nielsen forecast sees and expects a growing dynamic for Out-of-Home media towards Q4 and the end of this year. H1 was challenging, but we used opportunities for our Plus businesses and did our homework to further grow our core Out-of-Home segment.
Let me now hand over to Henning, who will guide you through the financial details and the results of the second quarter of 2021.
Thank you, Udo, and hello to everybody. Before we get into the details of Q2 2021 financials, let's note again that we are comparing two quarters with different economic backdrops here. Q2 2020, when we all went into a tightening lockdown, versus Q2 2021, a quarter with light at the end of the tunnel due to an increasing vaccination rate and reduced incidence rates, as well as a step-by-step easing of the COVID measures here in Germany. Even when taking this into account, Ströer continued to perform very strongly in Q2. Revenues were up significantly by 42%, or in absolute terms, from EUR 264 million -EUR 374 million. Organic growth developed accordingly. This strong sales increase led to a significantly improving EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA increased from EUR 55 million -EUR 107 million, thus more than compensating for the earnings decline of the first quarter.
The adjusted EBITDA margin improved significantly from 21% to around 29%. This development was driven by both the operating post-lockdown dynamics of our Out-of-Home business and continued strength in the digital and dialogue media business. At the same time, the support of short-time work allowances in this year's Q2 was some EUR 18 million less than in the prior year's second quarter. All in all, the underlying improvement was even stronger. As our focus is less on M&A and rather on organic growth, and since many restructuring efforts have already been implemented in the past, exceptional items are down significantly, from EUR -10.6 million -EUR 0.6 million. This improving earnings quality is in line with the guidance we have given. This does not imply that there will be no adjustments made in the future.
Again, the magnitude should be much lower than what we have seen in the last couple of years. Depreciation and amortization, including mainly the depreciation on IFRS 16 assets, was EUR -79 million, EUR 10 million below the level of Q2 2020. The main drivers behind this development are impairments in the prior year and lower amortizations from PPA assets. Some assets, which have been recognized in the process of historical purchase price allocations, are fully written down in the meantime. Underlying D&A has been more or less flat. With EUR -7 million, the financial result was EUR 1.7 million better compared to Q2 2020, mainly because of impairment on loans for former group companies in the prior year. The tax result came in with approximately EUR -5 million, compared to a tax income of EUR 8 million in Q2 2020.
Summing all this up, net income adjusted turned positive with EUR 26 million in Q2 2021, compared to a loss of EUR 17 million in Q2 2020. Reported net income showed an even stronger improvement from EUR -45.2 million - EUR 15.4 million. Supported by lower adjustments on the EBITDA level as well as lower adjustments on D&A, more importantly, fueled by a very healthy operational performance in the second quarter. Moving over to cash flow, we see an improving operating cash flow, which has improved to EUR 71 million-EUR 93 million. We see that better EBITDA is not fully converting into better cash flow. This has to be seen in the context of last year's heavy cash flow protection mode due to the evolving pandemic, which at the time led to a strong contribution from working capital.
Since we ended last year with a cash outflow from net working capital, this quarter's development should not be seen as an indication for the full fiscal year 2021. Cash out from non-M&A investments came in virtually flat at EUR 24 million. Free cash flow before M&A was EUR 17 million, up from EUR 48 million in the previous year's Q2. Free cash flow, including leasing payments, went up to EUR 34 million. With this development, financial debt came in at EUR 621 million, reflecting a sequential improvement compared to Q1. At the same time, bank leverage, after a spike in Q1, improved again to 2.3 x, slightly better than we expected and more or less on the level of year-end 2020. For the third quarter, we are foreseeing some impact on the leverage ratio resulting from the expected dividend payment.
With a cash-heavy fourth quarter, however, we expect a broadly stable ratio for the full fiscal year. Let us now have a closer look at the operating business segments and where we stand compared to 2020 as well as compared to pre-COVID 2019 levels. The Out-of-Home media segment showed an encouraging trajectory throughout the second quarter. Nonetheless, some areas were still dampened due to not yet fully recovered mobility compared to pre-COVID levels. However, travel data suggests a continuous improvement and easing here. That said, Out-of-Home sales were on an index level of 73% compared to pre-COVID. This index improved nicely throughout the quarter. Compared to the prior year, revenues were up 47%.
In this context, adjusted EBITDA almost doubled versus the prior year, from EUR 33 million-EUR 64 million, and the margin jumped from 32%-42% due to a better utilization of our fixed cost base and despite last year's support from short-time work allowances. Our new digital and dialogue media segment again performed very well in both sub-segments, even when considering the brightening of the overall economic environment. Revenues increased by around 45% from EUR 120 million in Q2 2020 to EUR 175 million in Q2 2021. Our online advertising and content publishing showed ongoing growth momentum as well as margin improvements. The same applies for our dialogue business, which last year was heavily impacted by the lockdown, in particular in the area of our door-to-door activities. All in all, adjusted EBITDA grew from EUR 19 million-EUR 45 million as adjusted EBITDA margin improved from 16%-26%.
Our Data as a Service and e-commerce segment continued its success story and accelerated revenue growth to 34% compared to 17% in the prior year period. In total, segment sales increased from EUR 42 million-EUR 56 million. With organic sales growth of 55%, Statista once again significantly accelerated growth compared to the average previous years and was the main sales contributor to the quarter for the segment. The sales are up by more than 20%, Asam continues its success story. Due to an increasing investment in accelerated growth and the expansion of our international business, especially at Asam, the adjusted EBITDA margin declined to 9%, and adjusted EBITDA was EUR 5 million in Q2 2021 compared to EUR 7 million in the corresponding prior -year period. Let me now hand you over to Christian, who will give you an update on Statista.
Thank you, Henning. In the last quarter, we gave you a detailed update on Asam. Today, we want to provide you with more information on Statista. Since the acquisition of Statista in 2016, the team around Dr. Friedrich Schwandt and Hubert Jakob has transformed the company into the globally leading business data platform. Showing consistent fast growth over the last five years, they have grown the Hamburg-based company into a leading international player with offices across the globe. In today's presentation, we want to focus on the core product of Statista. It is the foundation of Statista's business model and the main differentiating factor from other business information firms. Statista is the category leader in what we call data as a service. Traditionally, as most of you will probably remember, software was sold on CDs and had to be installed on the computer.
Updates were expensive and required a new CD. With the advent of fast and reliable internet connections in combination with cloud hosting services, numerous companies transformed the model. Salesforce was one of them. Taking the software for sales management into the cloud, they shifted from one-off license sales to a flexible subscription model. Statista did something similar with the business data market. Traditionally, companies would sell paper-based and later digital reports on specific topics to customers. If web access was provided, then the licenses were expensive and targeted at individual researchers within companies. Usually, only very few employees had access to this data, and everyone who needed such information had to approach the research team. Statista transformed the industry by creating a data-as-a-service platform. Customers acquire subscriptions for teams, departments, and frequently the entire company.
Through this subscription and a simple web-based user interface, users can access the information wherever they are. This leads to a deeper customer penetration compared to traditional business data providers, which results in higher usage, lower churn rates, and stable customer relationships. The core of the Statista platform is the single statistic. It provides an easy-to-understand overview of data on a specific topic, including transparent source information. Customers can change the layout to adjust it to their needs. Statista also provides various download functionalities. This enables customers to directly integrate the statistics into their workflows. Various enterprise clients are even using the so-called PowerPoint customization, which allows them to download statistics directly in their corporate PowerPoint design. With just one click, the statistic on the Statista website is converted into a slide for a PowerPoint presentation. This helps customers to save a lot of time.
Additionally, Statista makes it easier to search and digest content, both for Google and for customers. The standardized format makes content comparable and much easier to understand. In traditional market research reports, the relevant information is frequently hidden within long text paragraphs or in charts scattered across the text document. Statista focuses on the core quantitative information. Context is provided in the descriptions and annotations, but in the background. When Statista was founded, the focus of the content creation lay on the curation and aggregation of publicly available data sources. Those included national statistics offices, international bodies such as the World Bank, policy institutes, and others.
While this information is generally freely available to everyone, Statista added a massive benefit for customers by checking the sources, standardizing the information, categorizing it, and tagging the resulting statistics, thus making them searchable and easily accessible. Today, those sources only make up a fraction of the overall content base. Subsequently, Statista started to acquire additional data sources through contractual agreements. Those agreements provide Statista with access to broader and more specialized data from well-known research firms such as GfK, Ipsos, and YouGov. Statista customers can access this information through the Statista web platform and do not have to access various information providers. Starting in 2016, Statista has built up and expanded its own proprietary content base. A large team of data scientists and research analysts creates so-called Market Outlooks that allow customers to access data, a detailed country, and industry-specific forecasts for various topics.
The Consumer Market Outlook, for example, contains market data on fast-moving consumer goods, such as cosmetics. Additionally, the team conducts extensive surveys. Its flagship product, the Global Consumer Survey, gives paying customers access to consumer sentiment, attitudes, and behaviors in 56 countries. The data is based on surveys conducted with more than one million respondents worldwide. Over the last years, proprietary data has been continuously expanded and today accounts for roughly 50% of the information on the Statista platform. To make the differentiation between the two content types easier to understand, think of the following analogy. Proprietary data can be compared to Netflix originals, such as House of Cards, that are exclusively available on Netflix. Third-party content can be compared to non-exclusive shows like Stranger Things that are available on Netflix but also on other platforms. The investment into proprietary content has thus created a defendable competitive advantage for Statista.
Customers who want to access this kind of information need to stay with Statista, as it is not available on other platforms. The vast content on the platform in combination with customer-friendly usability and the simple premium subscription model has made Statista a credible, reliable source for business information. Today, almost 30 million users visit the Statista site per month. This is substantially more than even the largest competitors can command. The 15 other business information market research companies that you can see on the chart together command roughly the same number of visits as Statista alone. This traffic brings a consistent flow of potential users and subscribers to the platform. They get to know Statista through web searches for any kind of information. If they want to access more information, they need to sign up for a free account.
This provides Statista with contact information that can be used for targeted marketing and sales. The free account will allow them to access the entire platform. However, they can only see around 5% of the data, as the rest lies behind the paywall. Customers can find this information in their searches but need to subscribe for a paid account to access it. The large traffic base thus directly, through direct purchases, and indirectly, through leads for the sales team, helps Statista to win new customers and expand the business further without incurring marketing expense. We hope you find this information helpful. We are planning to provide deeper insights on Statista at our Capital Markets Day in October. Let me now talk briefly about our business outlook for the third quarter and our expectations for the full year 2021 and give you a preview of our upcoming ESG report.
For the third quarter, we expect our group revenue around 15%-20% above the prior year and our EBITDA above both 2020 and 2019. All three segments will contribute to this positive development. Our expectations for the full year 2021 are unchanged. We expect our Out-of-Home business at around EUR 700 million revenue, i.e., on the 2019 level, minus lockdown effects of EUR 120 million in H1, plus potential catch-up effects in Q4. This assumes that there's no substantial fourth COVID wave. On that basis, we see a revenue range of around EUR 1.6 billion for the full year for the group. Depending on the Out-of-Home dynamics towards Q4, we expect group EBITDA in the range of EUR 490 million-EUR 510 million. As already pointed out before, we do not expect any medium and long-term structural changes in our revenue and profitability expectations.
Let me now give you a preview of the highlights of our ESG report for 2020, which describes the progress we've made on our sustainability goals and which we will publish soon. Along with our guiding principles, efficiency, innovation, and responsibility, we've continued to push several ESG topics forward. Most importantly, we concluded the group-wide assessment of our corporate carbon footprint together with the renowned agency, ClimatePartner. In total, we produced CO₂ emissions of 47,000 tons in 2020, mainly from our digital Out-of-Home billboards, our employees commuting to and from work, our car fleet, and our office buildings. While this is within the typical range of our industry and already lower than in 2019, we are working hard on bringing this number down significantly. Most importantly, we are switching our energy contracts to green energy.
All our office buildings and 80% of our Out-of-Home billboards are run without CO₂ emissions already, resulting in a positive impact that we will see in the 2021 numbers. In addition, we started to offset our CO₂ emissions from Out-of-Home and online campaigns via a reforestation program in Colombia. This is certainly not enough. We set ourselves the goal to reach climate neutrality for the entire company by 2025, and we'll work relentlessly towards making this happen. Another key goal for us is to use both our Out-of-Home and online reach to promote sustainability topics on a pro bono basis. We are very happy to announce a strategic multi-year collaboration with UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund. Our joint objective is to promote the rights and well-being of children worldwide.
We aim to inform and raise broad awareness and wide attention to advocate children's rights and the UNICEF Child Rights School, in particular, across all of Germany. We aim to co-develop campaigns supporting children's rights and UNICEF's work in Germany and play it out on our nationwide digital Out-of-Home and online network. In total, we will dedicate media reach worth a few million EUR to this effort. On the governance dimension, cybersecurity remains key to us. Rooted in a newly defined group-wide cybersecurity strategy, we are now working on further professionalizing our cybersecurity governance. This includes building up a dedicated organization with clear responsibilities, conducting a rigorous vulnerability management via scans and penetration tests, and managing the risk in the information security management system, OneTrust. Most importantly, we were able to close all severe security weaknesses identified in our initial assessment from the end of last year.
We will provide more information on these topics and quantify our progress towards more sustainability in our 2020 ESG report in a couple of weeks. Let me close the presentation by looking at our financial calendar for the coming months. Our AGM is scheduled for September 3rd. Around this time, we will also publish our ESG report. We will hold a Capital Markets Day in early October. We are planning to do a review of the company's development in the last eight years and our current Out-of-Home Plus strategy.
Furthermore, we will give you a midterm outlook on our Out-of-Home core business, especially how digitization will drive our market share in the coming five years. We will make a deeper dive into Statista and Asam. We will provide more information on exact timing and location soon. Our Q3 quarterly statement will be published on November 10th. Thank you, everyone. We are now happy to take your questions.
Thank you. We will now begin the question -and-answer session. If you have a question for our speakers, please dial zero and one on your telephone keypad now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask a question. If you find your question is answered before it is your turn to speak, you can dial zero and two to cancel your question. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selection. One moment, please, for our first question. The first question we've received is from Annick Maas, Exane BNP Paribas. Your line is now open, please go ahead.
Good morning. I have three questions today. The first one is you say on slide five that programmatic currently makes up 43% of public video revenue. That seems to be quite a big chunk compared to how much peers are generating from programmatic. I'm just keen to really understand how you define programmatic here? My second question is, could you give us an update on whether you had more conversations regarding the sale of Asam Beauty over the last month? Just thinking about the cash of a potential Asam and Statista sale IPO, what are you intending to use this cash for? Thank you.
Hi, Annick. Christian. Thanks for your questions. On the first one on programmatic, it's quite a simple definition: all kinds of revenues that come in via trading desks and demand-side platforms. That means it can be automated trading as well as revenues that come through private auctions, private deals, or also, meanwhile, open auctions, a very small part. The key point is the technical execution is coming via demand-side platforms and trading desks that originally have been implemented only for the online business. What's the reason for the relatively high number? I think the reason for that is that , meanwhile, for six or seven years, we have been working on that, while I think the rest of the market has been working on that topic for 18 months.
I think we've, meanwhile, both online agencies, digital agencies, and traditional media agencies, but also Out-of-Home specialists that work with more and more automated campaign bookings, and that's what we ultimately wanted. On the one hand, access to digital money, which is then via the logic of programmatic trading, is also allocated to digital Out-of-Home, and ideally as a second effect, the traditional Out-of-Home industry learns that there are massive process benefits through automated trading, which also allows us a smarter yielding of our inventory. You're right. I would say the true global average is probably a low single-digit number of programmatic volumes going on in digital Out-of-Home. I think we are above 40%, and that's definitely also a number that was pushed further by COVID.
I think we are , meanwhile, getting closer to where the online standards are in Germany, which are around 50% or slightly above for the traditional online business.
That's super clear. Thank you.
On AsamBeauty , maybe just to reiterate what we've stated so far, our key priority is to grow the business to a size of around EUR 200 million in turnover, and we are fully on track with regard to reaching that number next year, so in 2022. This is what we're focusing on together with the company. You're right, we've initiated talks, specifically with banks, to understand better how they look at the company. Also, what are the key elements of the equity story that we have already presented in our last call, and can we also get a bit of judgment on valuation and process? I believe we will really actively reach out to the investor community early next year.
Annick, Henning here. On the question of potential disposal proceeds. First comment is, I'd say, cross that bridge when you get to it. In general, we are thinking along the lines of the bank leverage, which we're seeing now has sequentially improved from Q1 to Q2. However, we're still a little bit weaker than the pre-COVID level. In general, you also know that we are constructive in terms of the dividends. I think we need to find the right balance of both getting back to the historical bank leverage ratios and letting shareholders also benefit from potential proceeds.
Understood. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from Christopher Johnen, HSBC. The line is now open. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Thanks also for taking my questions. The first on the order book. On the slide, you say that you have a robust outlook and pre-bookings also in September and October. Is there any chance we can get a bit more color on that, particularly on October? I know that the comps are not exactly the same in Q3 and Q4, but are we talking a similar type of growth to the range given in Q3? Any color on that would be great. I take the comments on Asam being on track, that there is no change to view, also with respect to growth rates for 2021. Is the same also true for Statista? You gave some indication last quarter. That'll be interesting. Last one, I don't know if it's worth talking about, but I figured I'd ask.
There's been a bit of a debate in terms of political advertising in Germany, particularly with respect to the Green Party the last couple of weeks, I would say. The topic of attack ads, is this something worth talking about? What's been your sort of feedback? Do you expect any sort of even possibility of pushback on political advertising? Any comment, that would be great. Thank you.
Thanks for your questions, Christopher. I'll start with your last question. Yes, indeed, there's been massive debate around aggressive advertising during, I think, the campaigns around the coming election. I think historically, we've always had, and we have this also today, a very clear position. We advertise everything that is not illegal and is not against public policy. Therefore, there is freedom of speech in our country, and we accept and respect that. Anything beyond that would be tricky because, beyond, I think, the legal framework, you would start to make judgments. The problem with those judgments, especially as a company that deals with marketing and advertising, is where to start and where to end. Obviously, if it comes down to opinions, it's very difficult to define a clear and neutral line.
Our point was always, we respect the legal framework, and we want to be 100% neutral. What we've seen, I think, in the last week was a lot of debate and also, I don't know, an overall campaign atmosphere that is ultra-aggressive. That suddenly someone like us that tries to be just neutral and doesn't want to be the referee for that just offers a platform for communication and gets in between the lines. Based on that, we sent a public and an open letter to all the parties at the end of last week and invited them to a roundtable.
We're already in discussions with all the parties on how to organize it and where their current positions are to either move on with how we deal with it today, if everyone is fine, or to find a new framework that everyone agrees on and everyone accepts so that we can act accordingly then. It needs to be a clear framework so that judgment decisions are not up to us. That is our position at the moment, and we try to play here an absolutely neutral and pragmatic role. Maybe just commenting on the commercial impact, because I think that's an important aspect that just illustrates a little bit
Situation in a year like this year, where we have a nationwide election, Bundestagswahl, because that's ultimately always a slightly bigger budget driver. The total Out-of-Home revenues that we generate through political campaigns are around EUR 5 million. In non-Bundestagswahl years, without the national elections, if we only have, I don't know, two, three, or up to five regional elections or state elections, the volume is normally around EUR 2 million-2.5 million. The annual average over four years is around EUR 3 million. Given the fact that the current level of debate is, indeed, a radical position from us could also be that you accept the law and freedom of speech if that is no longer reasonable or people don't accept it and you're suddenly in the middle of discussions.
The end parties cannot agree jointly to a fair -play game where the rules are crystal clear and we execute it, then another neutral position could be just to have no political communication at all on Out-of-Home advertising. Not sure if this is really reasonable in a democracy or if you shouldn't have that debate publicly, but if we come to situations where our inventory gets damaged, if we get attacked for trying to be neutral, or if our employees don't feel comfortable with being attacked on social media, then, yeah, we need to change something about it. That's the overall situation at the moment. Commercially, I think it's not really something crucial, but the emotional debate is quite big.
Maybe, Christopher.
That's very helpful.
Not to be impolite, but we feel that we have given enough, I think, granularity on what we see and what we have in terms of visibility. It's clear if you look at the second half, implicitly, we are showing Out-of-Home getting back to 2019 levels. If you think from a group perspective, growth in the second half will be much more driven by Out-of-Home than by the plus businesses. I think we leave it there for the moment. However, that comes with the caveat, obviously, that we do not anticipate at the moment that there is any significant impact from the discussion around the fourth wave. This is not included in our prognosis.
No, it's very clear. I had to try. Thanks.
Christopher, I believe your last point was on the growth perspective of Statista. As we pointed out, we had a very strong quarter again this quarter, Q2, with Statista, and we are also very optimistic for the remainder of the year. For the full year, as we always stated, we expect Statista to grow in a corridor of 25%-30%. This is also actually the growth rate that we target for next year. I think the company just has so many levers to grow. Certainly, still, the existing markets are not saturated. We're driving the internationalization. We're working on our product portfolio, where we can drive sales. Then also, another lever, obviously, is pricing. What I'm trying to state is we are fully confident in what we outlined for Statista and reaching EUR 200 million in a couple of years.
Maybe just pick up that point and just come back to what Henning said, because I think we, over the last six to nine months, had a couple of statements to that, and we would still stick to that. I think we feel comfortable with a leverage of up to 2.5 x. I think in the middle of next year, we will already be close to only half of that as we see how the business evolves. With any funds coming from disposals, I think we said we don't see share buybacks at the moment. We don't see that we need extraordinary extra money to invest in our digitization. The only solution left is ultimately special dividends, paying out the money. I think that's what we said over the last quarters, and that situation is unchanged.
As Christian said, we have to do our homework first and develop the assets to the level where we feel they are , and then we are prepared to have a closer look at crystallizing the value.
Perfect. Very clear. Thanks, guys.
Christopher.
Thank you. The next question is from Craig Abbott, Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yes. Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for your very detailed answers a few moments ago regarding this whole issue of political advertising. If I may, just two quick follow-ups on that topic. The first one is, my understanding was that you're actually required to provide a certain amount, a percentage of your inventory for a brief period of time around the major, at least the national elections, I think two or three weeks. Is that not true? If you could just answer that with regards to the roundtable talks you've got scheduled for next week. My follow-up is, you were very clear about the immediate commercial impact if you were to come to the conclusion that you would not provide inventory for political advertising in the future.
Would there be any risk in terms of upcoming tenders for new concession mandates with some of the municipalities, or might there be some backlash that could negatively impact the outcome there for you? The second question that I have, please, is that you had a very strong margin in digital and dialogue media, and I would like to understand a little bit better, please, how much of that was structural, what was behind that, and how should we think about that going forward? The final question is just on the margin outlook for DAS and e-commerce. You're clearly investing in the growth that you've talked about. Can we expect that to ease back off a little bit and see some higher margins in the second half in that division? Thank you.
Hi, Craig. Thanks for your questions. Let me start with your first point on political communication. We are not forced, nor is it required, that we give specific parts of the inventory to political parties.
Okay.
That's the logic on television, especially public television, that all parties get the same special. I think. In our case, it's very difficult, up to impossible, to reject advertising from political parties unless you have, I don't know, some self-restriction that you put on the table. The other way around, already today, we have municipalities that have in the contract that they don't want political advertising.
Okay.
Exception and not the rule. There are always debates about exactly those points, because should there be alcohol, tobacco is , meanwhile, or for the future, already decided. What about political parties? What about NGOs and so on?
We see political parties as well as municipalities and the legislation and administration, they are always quite clear about where potential problems are and could be, but they have been struggling so far with defining rules. I think no matter if political advertising would be allowed or not, if I break it down on individual contracts, I think it wouldn't really change something because ultimately, it comes down to the money and the commercial deals that we have with municipalities. They already regulate it in different ways, and there are very different opinions from the various parties on this. Just to compare it with our other businesses, on our publishing assets, on t-online, and others, we don't take any political advertising because advertising on an online website is very close to the content, and we just want to avoid people mixing up information, opinion, and advertising.
We reject it there completely. It's the same with our online advertising business, also with third-party mandates, where we have also discussed and organized that historically, having a clear logic that we don't take political advertising exactly for the same reason. In the Out-of-Home business, our view was always it's part of public life, so we are 100% neutral and stick only to legal and restrictions.
That looks like we need to get to something different or at least have the debate with political parties around it to define a standard or just to reconfirm that the current standard is okay, which takes us a little bit out of the public discussion, where we feel we shouldn't be at the moment.
Okay. Thank you.
Craig, maybe answering your question on the margin profile in e-commerce. I actually would expect it to stay where we also saw it in Q2 for the rest of the year. This is basically going back to the internationalization that we're driving, specifically at Asam. We just opened the web shop in France, as well as in the U.S., and there we need to simply build brand awareness and combine that with performance marketing, which really costs a couple of million euros. In terms of this year, I think the margin profile will roughly stay where it is in Q2, so around 8%-10%.
Craig, on the margin question, the digital and dialogue segment, we have seen a very strong improvement of the margin in the first half, as you said, also driven by the fact that in the door-to-door area in the prior year, operation was very restricted or virtually not possible. Altogether, with the margin level in absolute terms in the first half, we feel pretty confident. I think it's fair to assume that there will not be an increase in the second half, because the second half last year was already pretty strong. Maybe we see a little bit of a normalization in the second half.
Yeah. Just remember, we had, I think, eight weeks with no door-to-door sales. Ultimately, despite Kurzarbeit, we had more or less fixed costs that we were paying without any revenues or gross margins. I think the overproportional step-up was clearly driven by the low comp from the previous year. As Henning said, I think both businesses, the online business with third-party sales and our own publishing assets, as well as dialogue or direct media with both contact centers and door-to-door sales, are in very good shape at the moment. I think the current performance is free of any one-time effects, or if there's been a step-up through the crisis, we see that it is recurring. The current run rate looks like a fair view on what is possible margin-wise. We're doing a good job.
Okay. That was all very helpful. Thank you very much, gentlemen.
The next question is from Nizla Naizer, Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Great. Thank you. I have three questions from my end. The first is on the roadside screen, sort of built out to 1,000 screens. Could you remind us again, what would the impact be in terms of growth for the entire segment? I think you mentioned before that national-level customers would be interested in such a network of screens. Could you give us some color on what the prospects would be in terms of expanding that to national types of campaigns? How should we then think of Out-of-Home growth in a hopefully normal year, like 2022, on the back of everything that you've done this year? Secondly, Christian, could you remind us of the split between local, regional, and national sales at the moment in Out-of-Home media? How is the health of your local and regional clients at this degree? Some color there would be great.
My last question is on AsamBeauty. Now that you are seeing, I guess, a great normalization in the market, how is growth progressing in this particular e-commerce business? Would you even consider growing Asam via M&A or is it just an organic sort of path that you've envisioned for it? Some color there would be great. Thank you.
Thanks for your questions. Let me start with the middle one, around sales channels. I think when we look at the end of Q2 and what we see for Q3 at the moment, we are back to the historic mix between the sales channels of roughly 40% coming from national advertisers and large agencies, 40% coming from regional clients that are serviced through our media consultants, most of the time directly, and 20% coming from really small local businesses with tickets below EUR 40,000, sometimes EUR 50,000, and more of that kind of signage business. We are pretty much back to the sales structure we had before. Slightly different mix per product, I would say that should completely normalize throughout the second half of the year.
Coming from that, I think, based on a normalized level, the local sales channel is probably the fast-growing one, and both regional and national, especially if digital Out-of-Home picks up, should develop pretty much in line. On your first question, I think that's a really interesting question because there are two aspects to it. The first one is that we convert more analog sites into digital ones, and we have learned from the last three or four years that per location, we can, on average, at least quadruple the revenues. Just by switching a location where we've made maybe EUR 10,000 annual revenue in the last years, if we convert it to digital, just the step up in the inventory after, let's say, one year of pre-sales and acquiring clients means in the current setup, making EUR 40,000 out of EUR 10,000.
The key point now, which I think is very difficult to predict for the next 12 to 18 months, is what happens if we combine our 5,500 public video screens that are indoors with the best 1,000 locations outdoors that are now digitized. The question here is, will that be perceived from big national advertisers as a completely new advertising opportunity? Because with the combination of indoor and outdoor, you're suddenly able to reach through that medium by pressing one button together with Ströer, you can reach 55%–60% of the population across the country. I think that will be interesting for us to see if we can win incremental market share and if we are able to accelerate our historic growth rate.
I think what we've done so far is making sure that even if national advertisers take some time, we are fine with the investment case because we know the local customers-only model works already quite nicely. Secondly, to make sure that we can improve the yielding with national advertisers with a high share of programmatic revenues , we can guide or channel the revenues across the total digital portfolio to also strengthen roadside screens once we invest more. Thirdly, we need to make sure that we get to a critical mass and are in the top 20-25 cities, at least, plus have that crucial number of 1,000, where you would say with the standalone product, you already reach 20%, 25% of the population and can combine that with the indoor network. I think we have a really compelling and probably also globally quite unique product.
We'll talk about that and midterm plans and the logic in more detail at our Capital Markets Day, because I think then we can make midterm projections over the next four to five years, and I think that's the interesting long-term view. As we are just going into pre-marketing, we are launching dynamic audiences for advertisers. There are a lot of new features, but it's very difficult to predict what the very concrete impact will be already in the next quarter or next year. For us, it's a midterm plan and a long-term strategic initiative.
The concrete step one or two in implementing it in the market is sometimes a bit difficult to predict, but we are 100% convinced that no matter if it takes two years, one year, three years, or five years, in the long run, it will change the role of Out-of-Home in the total advertising market. Apart from global platforms like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, I think there is no other channel or medium currently in the market that is able to pick up declining revenues from traditional broadcasting television or print media in a comparable way. That's where we are 100% convinced of.
Nizla, your question, as I'm hearing, was a bit hard to understand. What I understood was your question on organic versus inorganic growth. Let me comment on that, and maybe then you just add to what you wanted to add.
The answer is relatively simple. Our clear focus is on organic growth. As we stated, we want to grow the company this year by 30%+ and have similar growth ambitions for next year. We also simply believe that we have to have that growth potentially, organically or internally, with us. Obviously, there's still a lot of room to grow in what we are currently already doing. The e-commerce market in DACH, where we want to continue to grow. There are specifically these two growth levers that we want to pull. One is that we already talked about the live shopping experience. We bring in more and more content live and stream that live to the customers. That obviously involves finding the right people, moderators, and influencers to do that, but also building the tech infrastructure behind it.
The second big lever is obviously the internationalization part, as I mentioned earlier, we just opened up France and the U.S. For next year or the year after, we're also looking at China. All of our sales team is really focused on that. As you can imagine, that also has implications for other departments in the company, for example, the tech department that's building out these international websites. What I'm trying to say is we focus on these organic growth levers to drive the business forward.
Perfect. That was all very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you to all of you. As a reminder to ask a question, you have to press zero and one on your telephone keypad. We've received a follow-up question from Craig Abbott, Kepler Cheuvreux. The line is now open. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi again. Thanks for taking my follow-up. You mentioned in the presentation that your estimated market share and Out-of-Home in Germany are now around 63%. I just wondered if you see, in the medium term, a potential ceiling before you might begin to face pushback or potential limitations? Thank you.
Hi, Craig. No, not really because I think we've calculated here our market share based on the revenues because there are different ways of calculating it. You could do it by number of sites, you compare apples with pears because the format's also different. We just said, okay, we do any kind of Out-of-Home advertising because we stand for advertising in the public space, and we look at the net revenues that are calculated by the advertisers themselves through the ZAW, and we look at our net revenues that we have for the German market. Yeah.
I think from an advertiser's point of view, especially when Out-of-Home becomes more digital, I think it's a really good opportunity for them because they get Out-of-Home out of one or two hands. I think that allows us also to increase the quality of the medium. We are able to make it more flexible and convenient for them because they don't need to go via a lot of shops.
I think ultimately, especially from the buyer side at the moment, including the investments that we make into digitization, and I think that's what they also see for JCDecaux. I think we get rather positive feedback. The other way around, it also means that every location that we market and sell delivers more revenues and ultimately better payouts to municipalities and private landlords. What we are doing is creating benefits for both sides. Better product for advertisers and agencies, a more digital product. That's exactly what they want. We reinvest most of the money that we make. Secondly, also for the landlords, they get a better extraction rate. Ideally, we need less locations, and instead of 1,000 analog locations in the city, maybe with 200 digital locations we can deliver three or four times more revenue.
Our feeling at the moment is that market development goes its way, and we would rather see support on all sides for those developments.
Okay. Thank you. Excuse me. Can I just follow up real quick? Looking out at the next few years, you said you expect to approach 1,000 digital roadside billboards by the beginning of next year. What is your target? Can you just remind us again if it hasn't changed, say, for two or three years from now or five years from now? Thank you.
Yeah. As I said before, we will make a more detailed midterm plan at the Capital Markets Day. If you, and I'm sure you remember, the last Capital Markets Day, we talked about 3,000 to 5,000 locations over the next seven or eight years. When we talk in autumn this year, we will talk about, okay, what will happen in four or five years' time. I think that target wouldn't have changed. The difference is that by then we will be close to 1,000, and we will have a proof point for what happens with the first 1,000 that the model works, and we can show more of what will happen over the next also 12 to 18 months for advertisers. What kind of product will they see? How does that differ from the history?
I think that is ultimately... I think so far it has been vague numbers and plans. I think we come to a point where we get into a new phase when people see more and more digital Out-of-Home out there on the street. So far, it is more indoor, but I think the more advertisers and agencies see it in the bigger cities, the more you will see premium advertising on there, I think the more it will completely change the view on Out-of-Home in general. I think it is an interesting opportunity because we are just at the tipping point.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Craig.
Thank you. There are no further questions. I would like to hand it back to you.
Okay. Thank you very much.