YouTube reaching saturation in Germany among digital natives as viewers migrate to mobile

Nearly half of Germany's population (48.7 percent) will watch a video via YouTube's website or app at least once a month in 2018, to eMarketer’s first YouTube and mobile video forecast. The study found that 39.9 million people in Germany will use YouTube "regularly", making it the most popular digital video platform in the country. YouTube is also nearing saturation in Germany among digital viewers, with 93.7 percent of this group viewing the platform this year, according to eMarketer’s forecast.

The eMarketer research also found that digital video viewing is migrating to mobile overall, and more than 59 percent of digital video viewers in Germany are estimated to use mobile phones to stream or download video content in 2018. That figure is expected to climb to 63 percent by 2021, said eMarketer. The study attributes the sector's growth to the investments that apps like Facebook and Instagram have made into their video offerings as well as the increasing popularity of mobile messaging apps like Whatsapp. More than two thirds of all social network users in Germany will log in to these networks via a mobile phone this year, according to the study.