Outbrain in Germany: Reach 92% of Internet Users via Axel Springer

In April 2022, one native advertising source quietly became the most powerful distribution channel in Germany. Outbrain signed a new partnership with Axel Springer, and overnight its reach in Germany climbed to 92% of all internet users in the country. That is 55 million unique users you can touch through a single platform.

If you run DTC, lead-gen, or affiliate offers and you have been ignoring native because you thought the reach was thin, this changes the math. One traffic source, 92% of a market. That is Facebook-level addressability without the Facebook auction.

What the Outbrain Axel Springer partnership actually means

Axel Springer announced the deal at the end of March 2022, and by the beginning of April the new placements were already live inside our active campaigns. That speed matters — most publisher integrations take quarters, not weeks, and we saw the Axel Springer inventory show up on new campaigns inside roughly two weeks of the announcement.

I'm Marcel Sattler, founder of native-advertising.net, and since 2015 I've deployed over $100M across Taboola, Outbrain, Newsbreak, MGID, Yahoo Native, Mediago, and RevContent for DTC, lead-gen, and affiliate brands — so when a single native source jumps to 92% reach in a Tier-1 market, I pay attention.

Outbrain published the press release on its blog, in German, alongside a separate official press release that lists the placements. The headline number is the one that should stop you: 92% reach in Germany. Translated out of percentages, that is roughly 55 million unique users available through Outbrain alone. Not the combined reach of every native network. Just Outbrain.

For context, we usually reserve "you can reach almost everyone" language for Google, Facebook, and Instagram. Outbrain now sits in that conversation in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland — the three DACH markets where this deal moves your media plan.

Why Axel Springer unlocks 92% of German internet users

The reach comes from the brands. Everyone in the DACH region knows BILD and WELT. But when I pulled up the Axel Springer corporate portfolio to build this breakdown, the part that surprised me was how many brands beyond those two flagships sit under the same roof — and most media buyers, myself included, can't name them all from memory.

Pull up the Axel Springer corporate site and the list keeps going:

• BILD and WELT — the headline news brands every German knows
• Business Insider — finance and business audiences (Outbrain's own release calls out Business Insider and Finanzen.net)
• Auto Bild — automotive purchase intent
• StepStone — jobs and careers, a high-intent lead-gen environment
• Immowelt — real estate
• Rolling Stone and Musikexpress — music and entertainment verticals
• Politico — politics, including US placements

That spread is the point. Native works best when the placement context matches the offer. With Axel Springer behind Outbrain, an automotive offer can sit on Auto Bild, a finance offer on Business Insider or Finanzen.net, a careers or B2B offer alongside StepStone, and a broad consumer offer on BILD — all from one account, one pixel, one optimization engine.

18 of the top 25 German websites now carry the Outbrain feed

Here is the stat that closes the argument. The Outbrain feed is now embedded on 18 of the top 25 most-trafficked websites in Germany. Only 7 of the biggest 25 sites in the country do NOT run it.

Those placements include n-tv, Der Spiegel, Focus Online, and t-online, plus vertical destinations like Chefkoch, Gala, and Kika. That is mainstream news, food, lifestyle, and kids' content under one buying platform — four completely different audience contexts you can target without ever leaving Outbrain.

When 18 of the top 25 sites in a market share the same feed, you stop fighting for scraps of inventory and start choosing where you want to be. For a media buyer, that is the difference between a test market and a real growth channel. Seven sites out of the top 25 sitting outside the feed is a rounding error against the 55 million unique users sitting inside it.

The reach isn't only German — Axel Springer is a global footprint

Outbrain's official press release goes a step past the German numbers and lists placements pulled from the wider Axel Springer world. The same partnership puts the feed on Rolling Stone, Musikexpress, Business Insider, and Finanzen.net, and extends into Politico and US-based media brands as well.

That matters for two kinds of advertiser. If you run a DACH-first offer, the German top-25 footprint is your scale. If you run a multi-market affiliate or DTC offer, the Axel Springer relationship gives you a consistent buying surface that reaches beyond Germany into the same publisher family — so the creative and landing-page logic that wins in Germany has somewhere to travel.

The practical read: you are not buying a single-country deal. You are buying into one publisher's entire network, and Outbrain is the only native source with the feed embedded across all of it as of 2022.

Why I recommend starting on Outbrain in Germany right now

If you are deciding whether to start native advertising in the DACH region, or whether to add Outbrain to an existing Taboola or RevContent setup, three things make Outbrain the call in Germany today.

1. Placements. The Axel Springer deal plus the existing top-25 footprint gives you premium, brand-safe inventory that is genuinely hard to find anywhere else in German native — 18 of the top 25 sites, 55 million unique users, in one account.
2. The algorithm. Compared to Facebook, every native algorithm is dumb. But compared to other native sources, Outbrain's optimization is the smartest engine in the category right now. That means faster learning and less budget burned finding your audience.
3. New ad formats. Outbrain rolled out a batch of new formats in 2022, including video units that run conversion campaigns — not just brand awareness. You can drive actual sales and leads, not vanity impressions. I covered that format rollout in a separate breakdown, and it's the third reason Outbrain is my default pick this year.

That combination is why, for a new project in Germany today, I would go Outbrain first. It is an opinion, but it is an opinion backed by where the inventory and the algorithm actually are in 2022.

How the new video formats change a conversion play

The reach number gets the headlines, but the format change is what makes 55 million users worth chasing. Historically, native video was an awareness buy — you paid for views and hoped attention turned into something. Outbrain's 2022 formats let you run video as a conversion campaign, optimizing toward the same purchase or lead event you'd use on a standard native image ad.

For DTC and dropshipping, that means a product-demo video can run against the same audience as a static feed unit and be judged on cost-per-purchase, not cost-per-view. For lead-gen, a short explainer can sit on StepStone-adjacent inventory and optimize to form fills. The point is that the smartest native algorithm now has a richer creative format pointed at the bottom of the funnel, not just the top.

If you're already running ecommerce native on image creatives, the new video formats are the cheapest test you'll run all quarter — same audience, same conversion goal, new creative surface.

How this fits a DACH native advertising strategy

Ninety-two percent reach does not mean you put your whole budget in one place and walk away. Outbrain is the anchor, not the entire plan.

Taboola is still the other major native source, and for some German verticals smaller players can be unique — Adup Tech in particular sometimes surfaces pockets of cheap, relevant inventory, and travel offers especially find audiences on niche networks that the big two don't price well. The right structure is Outbrain as your scale engine, with secondary sources layered in to capture audiences it misses and to keep your CPCs honest through competition.

The 55 million unique users are the scaling ceiling. Most advertisers never come close to exhausting it, which means your real constraint in 2022 is creative and offer fit, not available inventory. If your funnel converts, Germany now has the inventory to scale it.

Watch the full breakdown

Is your account a fit for the same play?

If you are launching native in Germany, Austria, or Switzerland, the Outbrain Axel Springer footprint is the strongest starting point available right now — 92% reach, 55 million unique users, premium brands, and an algorithm that can carry conversion campaigns and the new video formats. The question is whether your offer and creative are built to convert against that inventory.

That is where we come in. We run native every day across Outbrain and Taboola, and we structure DACH campaigns to use Outbrain as the scale anchor while testing secondary sources for incremental reach. Book a strategy call and we will map your offer to the right placements — whether you are in ecommerce, lead-gen, or affiliate. Want proof first? See what we have done in our case studies.