The Finance sector and online advertising

Total online advertising across sectors is, today, well in excess of £ 2,000 million. Of this paid for search accounts for roughly 55 % of the total share, display around 20% and the rest goes to classified advertising.

Among various sectors, the finance sector has very quickly embraced online advertising. If we think about it, a lot of financial transactions – insurance, banking, credit cards – are done on the web. Speaking for myself, all my insurance decisions, credit card decisions are transacted on the web.

The finance sector accounts for roughly 10% of the online advertising pie. Preceding the finance sector in online advertising are recruitment (predictably), automotive, property and technology.

Within the finance sector, the retail sector has particularly adopted the internet. Account Management and transactions, online bill-pay, banking services, stock trading etc are routinely done over the web.

An effective internet strategy has yielded a number of benefits to the financial sector –

An increase in account balances

Better levels of customer satisfaction and retention

Increased online trading

Among the different demographics the 55 + category have been demonstrated to be particularly keen to shop for online financial products. They were most likely to shop for insurance – home, car and contents, investment products, stocks, pensions etc. A very high percentage of the younger demographic (80%+) bought car insurance on the web.

The finance shopper is very clear about what he/she is looking for. This is evidenced by the observed usage of very specific search keywords. For example, home and contents insurance London. This is in a sense a boon to the online marketers as they have a much larger selection of keywords to select from. They can also have a more sharply focused offering – offering home and contents insurance to Birmingham for example.

The average network would baulk at the idea of taking on a CPL campaign. But when it comes to a finance campaign, networks are open to the idea of a CPL campaign. I recall running a CPL campaign for a finance company that was looking to get in registrations. The campaign had a strong story backed by compelling creatives which resulted in good leads for the customer, automatically resulting in ROI objectives being achieved.