Financial marketers continue to target digital channels with search leading the way
Finance failed to keep pace with the overall growth in advertising in the second quarter of 2016 as new data revealed marketers in the sector are increasingly turning towards digital channels.
While the overall ad market climbed 4.2%, finance saw a lift of only 2.9%, figures from the Standard Media Index, which measures media agency spend, showed.
The insurance sector fell 0.7% to $124m, domestic bank spend grew 10% to $77m and other financial services oversaw a 2% increase to $51m.
Jane Schulze, marketing director of Standard Media Index, said finance was increasingly focused on digital – search in particular – with the increase in spend bucking the overall trend.
Finance may have fallen behind other sector growth in the quarter, but spend on digital climbed 7.2%, significantly higher than the overall increase of 4.2%.
Marketers are now spending $37 of every $100 in digital channels, higher than the $26 overall market spend, Schulze revealed.
TV, meanwhile, captures 41% of financial marketer’s cash, compared to 44% overall.
Schultz said spend on search in the finance sector outstripped content for the first time in the second quarter.
Video also spiked, by 68%.
In a further breakdown of finance, while the insurance industry still spends the lion’s share of dollars on TV – $70.1m compared to $32.6m digitally – domestic banks only spend $20.3m on TV and $36m on digital channels.
The spend by other financial services saw a sharp change. While money spent on TV and digital was roughly equal in the second quarter of 2016, digital spend soared to $25m this year while TV fell to $13m in the second quarter of 2016.
