How The Top Financial Services Digital Advertisers Were Spending in Q4

Digital ad spend for the Financial Services Category dropped to $460M in the Fourth Quarter of 2016, down from $541M the previous quarter. While Q3 saw a 22 percent surge from the $443M spent by the category in Q2, the spike was short-lived and dropped back under $500M at the end of the year.

Desktop dips but leads overall

Desktop/display spend represented 64% of the total digital spend for the top 500 Financial Services advertisers during Q4. Display remains an effective device-type for brands even though the total spend was down twelve percent quarter-over-quarter.

Industry giant Capital One Financial Corporation reeled back spend across channels, leaving room for brands such as Citigroup, State Farm, and Geico to move up the rankings.

Mobile rising

With 24 percent of consumers opting to manage finances with an app, and another 40 percent that like or enjoy using mobile payment systems, Financial Services brands are getting on the mobile bandwagon. Spend for the device-type by the category increased by $8.5 million from Q3, bringing the total spend to $32.5M million.

While this number still trails the $293 million spent by Financial Services advertisers on display, and the $133 million spent on video, the investments are trending up as brand’s are integrating more crosschannel campaigns into their strategies.

Mobile Purchase Channels

Larger brands testing content ads

Content, or native, advertising consists of sponsored content that mimics the look and feel of organic posts on a blog or website, but are marked as advertiser content.

The medium is popular in financial services, where many sites feature relevant, engaging content on a variety of loan, finance, insurance and credit topics.

American Express Content Ads

In Q3, both the Yahoo! Content Network, and Taboola had 41 percent share of impression volume for native ad network partners. Yahoo! barely edged past Taboola in Q4, taking in 39 percent share compared to Taboola’s 38 percent. Outbrain increased their share by 7% representing the largest jump in revenue.

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