Retailers across Western Europe are pioneering the use of AI to boost digital sales, and new options for delivery and returns are emerging. Yet Europe’s main markets have been slow to embrace social commerce.

AI has been a hot topic for a while, and attitudes about the technology vary throughout Western Europe. Still, companies are adopting AI to improve business results.

eMarketer global director of public relations Douglas Clark shares our updated forecast for Netflix adoption in the UK, France and Germany.

Ecommerce sales in Spain will grow faster than any other country in Western Europe in the next three years, propelled by the rise of AliExpress and its continued competition with Amazon to be the go-to marketplace.

eMarketer junior forecasting analyst Nazmul Islam compares our mobile messaging app usage numbers with our mobile social networking usage figures and the factors behind the increasing gap.

eMarketer forecasting director Shelleen Shum shares our recently revised subscription OTT forecast for Western Europe this year and into 2023.

eMarketer forecasting director Shelleen Shum tees up our retail sales estimates for Western Europe and why Italy is lagging behind the rest.

eMarketer forecasting director Shelleen Shum compares our estimates for brick-and-mortar and ecommerce sales for Western European markets amid an economic slowdown.

As we’ve covered, ad blocking in the US and many parts of western Europe are here to stay. Whether it’s over privacy concerns or the general annoyance over ads ruining user experience, many internet users are not happy with ad loads when they browse the web.

The 2018 holiday season brought big rises in digital sales in Western Europe. The online grocery sector also experienced growth last year. Meanwhile, Amazon and Alibaba have both set their sights on major gains in the region.

Admittedly, this trend is less-advanced in Germany than in other major Western European markets, but it is still occuring. According to the IAB, 35% of brands polled in Germany that were buying ads programmatically had moved that function fully in-house as of March 2019; 54% had done so partially.

Programmatic is now the default method of buying digital display ads across Western Europe, and France is no exception—though the marketplace is less advanced than the UK in this respect. How big is the programmatic digital display ad market in France? Spending on programmatic advertising will reach €1.69 billion ($1.99 billion) in 2019—or 86.0% of all spending on digital display ads.

People in France were early adopters of smart payment cards, including chip-and-PIN and contactless technology. That has stifled proximity mobile payment adoption, with just 15.6% of France’s smartphone users expected to pay with their phone in-store in 2019.

While the number of users continues to rise, Germany is still far behind the Western European average. How many people in Germany use proximity mobile payments? We forecast that 6.7 million individuals in Germany will use proximity mobile payments at least once within a six-month period in 2019. This number will slowly increase to 10.5 million by 2023.

This report collection explores programmatic digital display ad spending through 2021 across Canada, China, France, Germany, the UK and the US. Reports include breakdowns by device, transaction type and more, and explore the factors driving investment.

In H1 2018, France was one of the few countries in Western Europe where more survey respondents polled by GlobalWebIndex owned a PC than a smartphone—though the difference was slight. As of H1 2019, smartphones had finally overtaken PCs, with ownership estimated at 92.3% and 85.8% of internet users, respectively. Younger consumers are the key to this shift.

Some 87.8% of internet users owned a desktop or laptop PC in H1 2019—one of the highest figures recorded in Western Europe. Yet affluent respondents were less likely to own a PC than those living in lower-income households. In H1 2018, all traditional media enjoyed solid penetration in all age groups in Switzerland.

eMarketer forecasting analyst Peter Vahle discusses our latest Facebook adoption numbers for France and Germany, and why continued losses are expected through 2023.

This figure places France on par with Germany (58.1%), but below the Western Europe average (59.2%) and well behind the UK (68.3%). With a younger population, however, France will outpace Germany slightly throughout the forecast, and by 2022, 60.9% of France’s population will be digital video viewers vs. 60.7% for Germany.

While Germany has slightly higher digital video viewer penetration than France, it is still behind the Western European average, and far behind the UK. How many digital video viewers are there in Germany? In Germany, there will be more than 47 million digital video viewers in 2019. This number will climb to close to 50 million by 2022, resulting in over 60% of the population watching digital video.