• by Skip Brand , May 7, 2014

Now that the recession is over, top financial brands such as HSBC, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citi, Morgan Stanley, Visa, MasterCard and American Express are growing their respective brands in double digits, according to Interbrand. The finance big 8 trails only Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook in brand growth. These financial advertisers grow in a digital bi-furcated fashion: They spend their money in two ways, either with super-premium buys such as event sponsorships, original content, takeovers at airports, appointment TV and Super Bowl ads, or through huge amounts of premium programmatic advertising. 

Programmatic now delivers more than 33% of financial ads, according to the Journal of Financial Adverting and Marketing. In addition, more than half of financial brands will spend ad budgets through RTB and programmatic for both branding and direct marketing campaigns.

Expect three trends in financial advertising as this segment begins to spend well over half of its ad dollars via RTB and programmatic: 1.) Video, video and more video 2.) Private exchanges with huge discounts for volume 3.) Viewability and cost-per-view (CPV) like Undertone and others are pushing to scale premium.

Video, Video and More Video

Tod Sacerdoti at BrightRoll was right with his 2014 prediction that nearly 75% percent of all digital video ad buys would be programmatic. This is due to very sophisticated programmatic platforms, simple-to-use video executions and optimization. These video buys are more automated, measurable and transparent than TV. Programmatic is the new premium, and video is just the required first step for the financial advertisers to lead the way.

Premium Private Exchanges with Huge Discounts

Private exchanges are creating predictable and incredible revenue growth in 2014. These new private exchanges are yielding much closer relationships between publisher, agency and advertiser in the financial space than direct sales ever did. Trading desks’ premium units are the fastest growing part of any agency holding group, and their new partnerships are fueling this growth.

Viewability and CPV

Viewable impressions are a no-brainer. Financial advertisers have always liked premium as defined as the right-hand-read, the top of the TV show 30-second ad placement or the priceless half-time or golf sponsorship. Now that viewable impressions are working in the real world, at scale, we are seeing huge growth with the big 8 in the financial sales category. With IAB standards in place, the financial digital media leaders along with the banks, credit card companies and financial institutions have joined in for real-time branding via programmatic. 

The glass is half-full for the digital media space in finance since they require scale. They are finally beginning to really move dollars into the RTB space to reach their audience, launch new products and build their brands. Publishers are not fighting brands like in other digital media spaces such as auto and travel. The financial brands and publishers do negotiate hard. They love their publishers. I am looking forward to seeing the finance professionals change the video, private exchange and CPV space with their leadership, big dollars and super-strong CMOs.