- German companies spend €30.9 billion on digital marketing, 268,000 people employed in the industry
- AI enables hyper-personalisation of advertising
Clothing in your favourite colour, hotel offers to match your booked flight, tickets for concerts from your personal playlist – large parts of online advertising are now personalised. And it’s a success: 54 percent of Germans have bought a product online at least once after seeing or hearing personalised advertising for it. 44 percent even went to a local store because of it. The majority of German internet users often encounter personalised advertising on social media (54 per cent). But consumers also often come across this form of advertising in online shops (51 per cent), via search engines (45 per cent) or email services (40 per cent). Around a third (36 per cent) also state that they often encounter personalised advertising on online news sites, video streaming services (36 per cent) or audio streaming services (32 per cent). These are the results of a Bitkom study on the value proposition of digital marketing, which was conducted among 1,010 Internet users aged 16 and up. ‘Personalised advertising is often more interesting for customers and more effective for companies than conventional, non-personalised advertising,’ says Dr. Bernhard Rohleder, CEO of Bitkom.
Regardless of the product that is the subject of the personalised advertising, a good third of internet users perceive it neutrally and thus neither as particularly annoying nor particularly useful. However, there are significant differences in the details: personalised ads for everyday products, such as food and beverages (36 percent), clothing and accessories (35 percent) or entertainment (33 percent), tend to be perceived as useful. For very expensive or highly personalised offers or content, personalised advertising is only considered useful by around one fifth of respondents: for example, for real estate (21 per cent), financial or insurance services (20 per cent) and, least of all, for political parties (19 per cent).
Overall, two-thirds of internet users agree that without personalised online advertising, significantly more websites or online services would be subject to a fee (65 per cent). When it comes to their preferred websites, it is also clear that the majority would rather see advertising than pay for content: Almost half prefer to visit free websites with non-personalised advertising (47 per cent), over a third prefer free sites with personalised advertising content, and only 16 per cent state that they prefer fee-based websites without advertising content.
Almost half (46 per cent) believe that a possible ban on personalised online advertising would be economically damaging, and they expect negative effects on economic growth in Germany. This is because this form of advertising helps small companies to remain competitive due to its lower costs – this is the opinion of almost two thirds of internet users (64 per cent). And even companies in niche markets would have significantly more difficulty reaching their customers without personalised online advertising – two thirds (63 per cent) are also convinced of this.
Digital marketing as an economic factor
Digital marketing, which includes personalised online advertising, is now an important economic sector. Spending in the industry has been rising steadily for years, despite economic crises. In 2024, the total expenditure, including personnel costs, amounted to 30.9 billion euros. Employment is also growing steadily: since 2018, the number of jobs in the industry has increased by about half and in 2024, there were 267,821 direct employees in digital marketing. Salaries in this sector are also increasing: from an average of just under €49,000 in 2018 to a good €63,500 in 2024. This corresponds to an average annual growth rate of 4.43 per cent over this six-year period. And the state benefits, too: tax revenues from income in the digital marketing sector will amount to €7.56 billion in 2024, which is about 24.5 per cent of total expenditure.
How AI will change digital marketing
Alongside economic growth, the introduction of AI into companies is also changing the qualification profiles in digital marketing. For example, AI specialists are already in high demand: around one in ten job ads explicitly requires AI skills and uses keywords such as ‘AI’, ‘ChatGPT’ or ‘Prompt’ (8 per cent). In job ads from companies with 501 to 1,000 employees, as many as 14 percent already include the keyword ‘AI’. This development will continue to intensify in the future: ‘For newcomers and those returning to digital marketing, skills in working with AI will be indispensable in the years to come. The corresponding applications will not replace human specialists as a rule, but will support them in their work and thus make them more productive,’ says Rohleder. Nevertheless, traditional qualifications and characteristics such as a university degree (38 per cent), professional experience (34 per cent), social media (31 per cent), SEO (search engine optimisation, 25 per cent) or creativity (20 per cent) remain important.
The influence of AI is already noticeable in the day-to-day tasks of digital marketing. Language models such as ChatGPT or Gemini are already firmly established in the creation of content such as texts, images, music and videos. In addition, AI can be used to deploy resources more effectively across all digital marketing channels. The possibilities range from automated tests and budget adjustments in campaign management, to more precise identification and automatic segmentation in target group analysis, to predictive analyses of purchasing behaviour or ad performance. Accordingly, there is an increasing demand for specialists who can harness these advantages for companies. New professions are emerging, such as AI trainers and data ethicists, and marketing professionals will no longer be able to avoid mastering at least basic AI skills.
For personalised online advertising, artificial intelligence will mean one thing above all in the future: hyper-personalisation. AI makes it possible to tailor ads with a high degree of precision. Rohleder: ‘Hyper-personalisation is the next stage of digital marketing. With the help of real-time data or precise behavioural analyses, content and offers can be tailored even more precisely to customers,’ emphasises Bitkom CEO Rohleder.
Note on methodology: The information is based on a study conducted by Statista on behalf of the digital association Bitkom. The study was supported by Google, MediaMarktSaturn, Meta, PwC, Microsoft, T-Systems, Bechtle, CRIF and Deutsche Bahn.