Digital Advertising in Germany 2021 Report

YouTube and Amazon are the most important channels for discovering new products and services
When asked on which channels they came across interesting products and services through advertising or sponsored content in the past 12 months, German internet users ranked YouTube (32%) and Amazon (25%) highest, followed by search engines (23%) and social media (17%). Among the social media channels Facebook (32%) and Instagram (29%) rank highest, followed by TikTok (15%) and Pinterest (8%).

94% of the German internet users remember having seen digital advertising in the past 4 weeks
With 94% of the German internet users having seen digital ads in the past 4 weeks, digital ads beat non-digital ads (92%) in terms of visibility. Among classical advertising channels TV ranks highest, with 46% of the internet users remembering to have seen TV ads in the past 4 weeks. Among the digital channels, YouTube is no. 1 with 56% of the respondents, followed by search engines (46%) and Amazon (38%).

Smartphone is the device where digital ads are noticed most frequently
82% of the German internet users say they notice digital ads on their smartphones at least sometimes. 29% even say they always notice ads when using the smartphone. The device where they noticed ads the second most often is the laptop (56%).

German internet users are generally distrustful of social media
When asked which websites and apps they trust to handle their personal data responsibly, 36% of the German internet users say they do not trust any of the websites and apps they could choose from. Video portals and streaming services rank highest with 24%, followed by search engines (23%) There is considerably less trust in social media: 51% of the German internet users say they do not trust any of the social media companies they could choose from in the survey to handle their personal data responsibly. Among the social media companies, TikTok ranks highest with 19%.

Only 23% think apps are collecting too much information
All attitudes about app tracking respondents were presented with receive limited approval (23% max), hinting that respondents may not have dealt with the issue. The items that receives the highest agreement are ‘Apps and games on my devices collect too much information about me’ and ‘I use additional protection software to protect myself and my data on my smartphone’.

Customer journey

• Attitudes
• Content discovery
• Product discovery

• Categories
• Devices

• Channels
• Preferred contents

• Subscriptions
• Drivers
• Services

• Attitudes
• Touchpoints

• Devices
• Touchpoints
• Triggers
• Barriers
• Channels
• Social media channels
• Irritation/annoyance

• Attitudes
• Behaviors
• Trust
• Use of personal data

• Attitudes
• Behaviors
• Acceptance

• Attitudes
• Permissions

• Usage

• Demographics