15 Mind-Blowing Digital Marketing Stats For Germany

Only 50% of online adults in Germany used social network sites by 2016, while WhatsApp is used daily by 79.2% of respondents. Get more information and insights at the new German-language CMO.com website.

Today we launch the German-language version of CMO.com. Each week we will deliver articles and interviews that will offer you insights, expertise, and inspiration for and by marketers and business leaders. We’ll focus on many of the specific challenges faced within the market around how digital is being used to not only transform marketing, but also business and industry itself.

We’ll explore what being an experience-led company means for you and your organisation, and how other businesses in the region are delivering compelling, personal, and useful experiences to consumers across every touch point. We’ll also expose you to the latest thinking around digital from your peers across DACH.

To celebrate the launch, we’ve collected some of the most interesting and relevant digital marketing stats for the German market. We have everything from website traffic growth, social media adoption, ecommerce growth, the rise of Industry 4.0, the emergence of smart-home tech, digital ad spend, and consumer trust in content.

1. In Germany, retail web traffic from smartphones has risen to 80% growth in Q2 2016. This is significantly above the European average of 54%. Germany is also seeing retail web traffic growth via tablets above the European average (14% YoY vs. -8% YoY).
2. By 2016, only 50% of online adults in Germany use social network sites. This puts the country in the same low-adoption category as Japan and Pakistan.

3. There’s a huge difference in social media adoption between millennials and the 35+ age group. While 81% of online users in Germany aged between 18 and 34 are on social, only 39% of people over 35+ use social networks. Large age gaps also appear in France (+41), Vietnam (+37), Poland (+35), and Japan (+35).
4. Snapchat is becoming a daily habit for German users at a faster rate than any of the app’s competitors. Almost a quarter (24.3%) of Snapchat users surveyed in November 2016 said they used the app daily, a 207% increase from 2015. Despite the increase in daily use, Snapchat is still far behind in overall popularity, with WhatsApp used daily by 79.2% of respondents and Facebook with nearly 60% daily use.

5. Germany, France, and the United Kingdom accounted for more than 60% of all ecommerce turnover in Europe, which totalled €509.9 billion in 2016. Although the U.K. leads when it comes to the size of the B2C ecommerce market, Germany has the greater number of online shoppers (51.6 million versus 43.4 million).
6. Online food retailing has seen slow adoption by the German market, and recent 2017 research explains why. Most consumers want to check the quality of groceries in person before buying (70%). Nearly half (49%) simply do not trust the quality of online goods, and 46% said that delivery costs were too high.
7. The most popular topics within manufacturing that have been discussed on social media between January 2016 and March 2017 are automation (64%), robots/jobs (33%,) and industry 4.0 (3%). The phrase “Industry 4.0” originated within the German government, and its ultimate intent is to create a “smart factory.” Social mentions for this trend have increased 51 times since January 2016. (Source: Adobe Digital Insights ).

8. Nearly three-quarters of German internet users said they would consider purchasing smart-home technology. Young adults are even more emphatic about smart devices, with 85% saying they would buy smart-home tech. As for the most popular technologies, almost half (46%) would consider energy-saving technology, and 40% would consider purchasing security technology.

9. Social sentiment towards automation and robots is positive in Germany, with a 2.35 score for “automation” and 1.83 for “robots” (on a sliding scale between -5 to 5). This sentiment is higher than in the U.S, the U.K, France, and the Netherlands. (Source: Adobe Digital Insights ).
10. In a global survey of online ads, 65% of internet users in Germany ranked banner ads and pop-ups as their top two most intrusive video ad formats. This is a similar size as annoyed U.S. users (63%) and French users (73%). Search, text, and conservative banner ads are considered to be the least intrusive globally.
11. In Q2 2015, 64% of online ads served in Germany met the IAB and Media Rating Council’s recommendation that an ad is considered viewable, which places Germany higher than France (62%) and the U.K. (49%).
12. German ad-blocking rates have steadily fallen through the last four consecutive quarters. The delivery of ads in Germany was blocked on 17.0% of desktop page impressions in Q4 2016, more than four percentage points down from Q4 2015.
13. Mobile ad spending in Germany is estimated to reach €3.16 billion in 2017, which will account for 57.2% of its digital ad spend. This is slightly below the worldwide average of 63.3%.

14. App usage has continued to grow in Germany, with 86.9% of users having used an app in the 3 months leading up to April 2016. However, there’s an indication that app users are becoming more discerning with their downloads: 12.1% downloaded one app, 9.4% downloaded two apps, and the drop-off is more severe for those who downloaded three or more.
15. Branded content has a better chance of appealing to teenagers in Germany aged between 16 to 19 than to older internet users. Branded events are the most favoured content type, followed by celebrity content and native articles. However, the difference in positive opinion towards branded content between teens and older respondents was less noticeable in France, Italy, or Spain.