About the screen

Europe’s largest multi-advertiser screen, Manchester Gateway, has set up home in the city’s premier location at Manchester Piccadilly Station. This 68.4m2 ‘super portrait’ format Lighthouse Technologies LED billboard is the brainchild of media company City Gateway Media and offers something just a bit different from the norm. See the screen in action.

City Gateway's Manchester tower dominates the skyline close to Manchester’s Piccadilly station.
The skyscraper screen introduces a new concept that pushes the boundaries of traditional outdoor media. Its super portrait design uses enhanced resolution panels, measures 3.6m wide by 19m high (the height of five double decker buses) and allows advertisers to broadcast content in any number of formats. It is positioned on an architecturally stunning structure in one of the UK’s fastest growing cities and boasts annual audiences in excess of 75 million, of which 72% are quoted as being ABC1: a fantastic proposition for potential advertisers.

The initial concept for the screen was the work of the founders of City Gateway Media, David Lamey and James Porter, who saw an opportunity to offer advertisers a unique proposition for broadcasting their message. More specifically, the founders were aware that the explosion of web-based advertising in portrait formats lends itself perfectly to the Manchester screen. Content is updated remotely from the City Gateway Media London office and, as well as advertising, time and temperature information is also displayed on the bottom portion of the screen.

“We considered traditional outdoor media formats,” says Porter, who is Financial Director for the company, “but were looking for something different, something that really pushes the envelope in that arena. We believe we have found the solution: a new format that gives advertisers the opportunity to do something unique, whilst not overburdening them with additional production costs.” The company has an in-house creative team that can take advertisers’ existing ads, whether they be posters, TV or web-based to create a new advertisement within an existing campaign, or advise a clients’ agency during pre-production of a new ad.