Bus stop that's worth its wait in gold

It is Britain's most lucrative bus stop - a £20,000-a-year money-making machine a world away from the dank, graffitidaubed shelters familiar to most commuters.

The stop, outside Selfridges in Oxford Street, is meticulously cleaned every week and checked for damage every day. Teams of contractors keep it in the best possible condition for advertisers prepared to pay £200 a week to display a single poster in view of thousands of passing shoppers.

This unlikely advertising goldmine - which brings in more than a junior nurse - is now at the centre of an extraordinary £100 million ad-land battle.

Some of the world's most powerful advertising groups are pitted against each other for the lucrative 10-year contract to sell poster space at 2,500 bus shelters in the capital.

"All the companies are desperately vying to introduce innovations to get a leg up on the other bidders," said Jeremy Lee of advertising magazine Campaign.

Such additions are thought to include plasma screens and adverts with sound.

Once regarded as the poor relation in the glamorous world of advertising, the so-called "outdoor" sector of bus shelters and billboards is now seeing the fastest growth - 10.4 per cent - and was worth a total of £774 million last year.

London's bus shelters are seen as particularly attractive because of the surge in bus use since the introduction of the congestion charge and the huge investment in upgrading the capital's shelters.

Stevie Spring, chief executive of Clear Channel UK, which has held the contract to sell advertising on London's bus shelters since the late Seventies and is bidding to have it renewed, said: "Think of it like a Monopoly board. The squares with the highest value such as Park Lane and Oxford Street are going to command the highest rates."

The massive fragmentation of the television advertising market through the growth of digital and satellite has also made companies think twice about the huge costs of buying broadcast time. Since 1998, "outdoor's" slice of the total advertising market has risen from seven per cent to nine per cent.

There are about 11,000 bus shelters in London, of which 10,000 are operated by Transport for London. About 5,000 of them carry advertising, and the contract for half of them expires this year. Rates vary enormously depending on the level of passing traffic, proximity to the West End and, in particular, its major shops.

TfL is due to award its contract in the autumn. Clear Channel UK faces competition from a number of firms - including French-owned company JC Decaux, and US media giant Viacom, which owns the CBS network and Citylights London, a joint venture between the UK group Maiden and a Spanish company Cemusa.