The rise of programmatic advertising

Programmatic advertising has emerged as one of the vanguard of precision marketing with 86% of overall digital advertising revenue forecasted to be from programmatic ads by 2026. Gone are the days of blanket campaigns and mass outreach efforts; instead, the focus has shifted towards granular audience segmentation and hyper-personalised messaging.

At the core of programmatic ads lies its ability to leverage vast amounts of data. From financial behaviours and demographics to nuanced interests, every data point serves as a pixel in the portrait of the affluent investor.

Real-time optimisation

One of programmatic advertising’s advantages is its capacity for real-time optimisation. This agility enables you to adapt your strategies on the fly, refining targeting parameters and message positioning to maximise relevance and resonance.

Programmatic advertising supports your asset management firm to overcome the limitations of traditional media channels. With the proliferation of digital touchpoints—from social media platforms and websites to mobile apps and connected devices—the opportunities for engagement are boundless. By seamlessly navigating digital touchpoints, you can create cohesive campaigns that cover diverse platforms with continuity.

The MVPs of programmatic advertising in the wealth management sector

1. Retargeting high-value prospects at BlackRock

BlackRock utilises programmatic retargeting to re-engage high-value prospects who have previously interacted with their brand. Through dynamic ad creative and strategic messaging, BlackRock reignites interest and prompts prospects to re-enter the sales funnel.

2. Segment-specific thought leadership at J.P. Morgan Asset Management

J.P. Morgan Asset Management disseminates segment-specific thought leadership content through programmatic advertising, establishing itself as a trusted advisor within the industry. By curating content that speaks directly to the interests and concerns of each demographic cohort, J.P. Morgan Asset Management strengthens its brand authority and fosters deeper connections with its target audience.

Programmatic advertising represents the best of precision targeting. By harnessing data-driven insights and automation, you can forge deeper connections with your target clients and thrive in an era defined by personalisation and precision.

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Understanding regulatory frameworks

The financial services industry operates within a tightly regulated environment, with agencies like the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK, The Council of Financial Regulators (CFR) in Australia, The European Banking Authority (EBA) in Europe, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US setting stringent guidelines to protect consumers and maintain market integrity. These regulations extend to advertising and marketing activities, requiring financial firms to adhere to strict rules regarding promoting their products and services.

Implications for programmatic advertising strategies

Programmatic advertising offers unparalleled efficiency and precision in targeting audiences, but it also introduces complexities when it comes to regulatory compliance. This is especially transparent when learning that 69% of programmatic advertising buyers feel that they lack transparency. Financial marketers must navigate a maze of rules to ensure their programmatic campaigns comply with regulations governing financial promotions, including:

1. Transparency: Disclosing accurate and relevant information about financial products and services. Ensuring transparency in ad placements and targeting criteria to avoid misleading consumers.
2. Suitability: Tailoring ad content and targeting to match the suitability of financial products for different customer segments. Avoid targeting vulnerable or unsuitable audiences with complex financial products.
3. Data privacy: Adhering to data protection regulations such as GDPR or CCPA to safeguard consumer data collected through programmatic advertising. Implementing robust data management practices to protect customer privacy and comply with regulatory requirements.

Navigating compliance requirements for programmatic advertising

To navigate the regulatory landscape effectively, you must adopt proactive compliance strategies:

1. Comprehensive compliance review: Conduct thorough reviews of programmatic ad campaigns to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements. Establish clear guidelines and procedures for approving ad content and targeting parameters.
2. Collaboration across departments: Foster collaboration between marketing, compliance, and legal teams to align programmatic advertising strategies with regulatory obligations. Ensure compliance considerations are integrated into the planning and execution of programmatic campaigns.
3. Ongoing monitoring and adaptation: Implement robust monitoring mechanisms to track ad placements and performance metrics in real-time. Continuously assess and adapt programmatic advertising strategies to address emerging regulatory concerns or changes in the legal landscape.

Mitigating risks and enhancing transparency

In addition to compliance efforts, you can mitigate risks and enhance transparency in programmatic advertising through:

1. Ad verification technologies: Leveraging ad verification tools and services to ensure ads are displayed in brand-safe environments and comply with regulatory requirements.Monitoring ad placements for fraudulent activity or non-compliant content.
2. Transparency initiatives: Embracing transparency initiatives such as ads.txt and sellers.json to provide greater visibility into the programmatic supply chain and enhance trust with consumers and regulators. Partnering with reputable ad exchanges and publishers to uphold transparency standards and mitigate ad fraud risks.

Best Practices for regulatory compliance and campaign effectiveness

Innovative approaches and best practices can help you strike the delicate balance between regulatory compliance and campaign effectiveness:

1. Audience segmentation and personalisation: Utilise data analytics and machine learning algorithms to segment audiences effectively and personalise ad content based on individual preferences and financial needs. Ensure personalised ads comply with suitability requirements and ethical considerations.
2. Content optimisation: Optimise ad creatives and messaging to resonate with target audiences while adhering to regulatory guidelines. Conduct A/B testing to refine ad content and improve engagement without compromising compliance.
3. Continuous learning and adaptation: Stay abreast of regulatory developments and industry trends through ongoing education and participation in industry forums and associations. Foster a culture of compliance and innovation within the organisation to adapt to evolving regulatory requirements and market dynamics.

To use programmatic advertising effectively, follow the rules, be transparent, and engage consumers while keeping their trust.

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The benefits of a paid media

The benefits of a paid social media strategy are you can scale up to as many markets as possible, depending on your finance brand’s budget and buy-in. This means you can begin a campaign targeting a select UK audience, before then increasing the range to include other countries like Spain or Germany, for example.

“When scaling, we can start off small before expanding to reach more target audiences,” says Cimino.

Paid media in this regard enables your finance brand to reach beyond your organic following. “If you’re just putting organic content out, there’s no guarantee anybody else is going to read it beyond your organic reach,” explains Cimino.

To generate new leads and funnel potential clients through to your website, a paid media approach is not simply a nice-to-have but an essential element to an always-on content program.

A paid media strategy builds trust

“Running a paid media strategy helps to build your follower base and expand your audience,” Cimino says. “Your followers are what potential clients will see and are what establishes your brand as a trusted source.”

At the heart of it, gaining a following on social media platforms can offer a competitive edge as it builds trust with clients. It’s unlikely your finance brand will be able to build a following without paid media and an always-on content strategy. This is simply because an always-on strategy that favours timely content means your brand voice is regularly seen by clients. By improving brand awareness and offering a perspective on current affairs, clients are likely to push through the top of the funnel (your content) and continue through to your products and website.

“Because finance brands have built trust at the beginning, through their always-on content strategy, potential clients will begin looking through your products and offerings,” adds Cimino. “They’ll move down the customer acquisition funnel.”

Why optimisation is the key to success

In order to optimise your paid media strategy to fulfil your business objectives and drive results, you must consistently analyse your website and social metrics. Looking past platform metrics, like clicks or shares, ensures your finance brand gains a panoptic view of how successful your customer acquisition process is. Understanding how your media buying strategy influences web conversion rates is critical to understanding what strategy is successful and what isn’t.

“Focusing on the onward journey beyond the ad is critical,” Cimino notes. “The ad is the only thing finance brands can control, so optimising the creatives, content and website is important to ensure the user journey is completed successfully.”

While you could have the best paid media strategy out there, if your website is not optimised to convert clients it won’t be successful. Ensure it’s user and mobile-friendly, accessible and tailored to your audience to ensure the client acquisition process is seamless.

The essentials

At the end of the day, paid media is an essential part of any always-on content strategy. To convert customers and generate meaningful leads you need to move beyond your follower base, improve brand awareness and gain trust – these can only be achieved through a paid media strategy that has been optimised to reach your objectives and drive consistent results. Consider your target audience and tailor your always-on content strategy to match. Paid media is the competitive edge your finance brand may be missing.

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What is media buying and planning?

Media buying and planning have never been more important in today’s climate with the pandemic forcing brands to go digital. While previously many large traditional finance brands benefitted from being well-known and having multiple physical locations, the battle for clients is now being waged online. “In the current climate finance brands have been forced to go digital. The evolution to social media has been ramped up,” Cimino explains. “The big names that some brands would look to as the biggest competitors actually have the smallest digital footprint.”

While finance brands still need to commit to an always-on content strategy across their social media channels, media buying and planning can amplify their reach past their organic followers. Essentially, media buying is purchasing advertising space on social platforms that are targeted and tailored to a particular demographic. Just like you purchase ads for television, you can do the same on social platforms.

The benefits of paid media

“All finance brands are now seeing the benefit of paid media as you can reach an audience beyond your organic following,” says Cimino. Media buying and planning is an important element of any finance brand’s content strategy as it enables them to reach an interested audience they would have failed to reach. When done correctly, a paid media strategy amplifies a brand helping to generate new leads, improve brand awareness and increase customer acquisition.

A media buying and planning strategy enables finance brands to target niche audiences. Rather than your finance brand’s content strategy simply being seen by your organic following, a paid media strategy can ensure your content is seen by exactly who you want. In fact, nearly 75% of successful content marketers say their content is meant for a specific audience.

Cimino explains, “On social media, you can target a user’s specific job title, so you can be so narrow with who you want to get your content in front of rather than just broad brushstrokes.”

“Publishing a consistent frequency of content through an amplification program not only increases brand awareness, brand trust and directs increased traffic to websites, but that trust is evident through an increase in following,” notes Cimino.

Our work with Aberdeen (across 6 years) saw them go from 0 followers on X to 190,000, 10,000 followers on LinkedIn to 110,000, and 5,000 followers on Facebook to 25,000. The same goes for AllianceBernstein. Within two years of working with The Dubs, they increased their X followers from 4,001 to 20,000 and LinkedIn followers from 47,000 to 71,000.

Why finance brands need to employ the experts

“The key in working with financial services experts is understanding the audiences that our clients want to reach,” states Cimino.

Cimino continues, “We ensure targeting is specific for each campaign, be that institutional investors or IFAs, to retirement advice or insurance. There are so many different audiences within the financial services sector to reach, and as experts, we have the understanding, experience and historical data to be able to reach a wide variety of audiences effectively.”

A financial expert can offer the competitive edge your finance brand may be looking for by having a deep understanding of who you want to reach. Without knowing how to target your audience, your paid content strategy will often be ineffective.

The roles and services of a financial services expert
Beyond understanding audiences and how to execute a paid media strategy, a financial services expert supports finance brands throughout the entire process. “We support our clients beyond social amplification – social is the end product,” explains Cimino. “We help provide the strategy behind the content they’re creating from website optimisation to creatives, to ensure audiences follow the user journey through to completion.”

The role of a media buying and planning agency includes:

• Identifying an objective: Prior to creating a paid media strategy, it’s critical your finance brand identifies a key outcome, whether that’s to increase web traffic or sign people up to a webinar. This is important to set out clear KPIs and will impact the content you create, the channels you market on and the amount of money it will cost.
• Strategy: This is the main area in which a financial services expert will help your brand. A clear strategy that works to achieve your objective is paramount to a successful paid media content strategy. Understanding your audience’s needs and objectives is key to ensuring your strategy is effective.
• Website optimisation: A strategy is only effective if your website is optimised to achieve your objective. Ensuring it’s user-friendly and accessible prior to implementing your paid media strategy will ensure greater success. As Cimino notes, “If we’re sending traffic to a website you need to consider what action the user will take. We need to monitor them and if they’re not doing what the client wants we help optimise the website so the user does what we need them to do.”
• Content:Creating engaging content, tailored to your audience, that funnels audiences to your website will ensure greater lead generation and client acquisition. Your content needs to be able to capture the attention of your specific audience. Cimino says, “you need to consider what’s going to make a user stop in their social media feed, engage with your ad and then click through”.

A financial services expert has a detailed understanding of how to track and attribute media spend and engagement to customer acquisition and FUM. Their historical data, clear understanding of niche audiences and experience means your finance brand won’t be pumping money into a media buying and planning strategy that’s ineffective.

“When attributing media spend and engagement to client acquisition it’s really important to go beyond vanity metrics,” explains Cimino. “As experts in the field, we see it as important to focus on website analytics. We not only understand the data but also help our clients set up their objectives so we can understand the user journey through to completion.”

Media buying and planning is critical for finance brands

At the end of the day, media buying and planning is an important component of your finance brands’ content marketing strategy as it enables you to reach beyond your organic following. A targeted approach to paid media means you can craft tailored content that is seen by specific, niche audiences. This can help generate leads, increase client acquisition, and improve brand awareness and trust. Working with a financial services expert can improve your media buying and planning strategy as their understanding of your brand, industry and audience can ensure it’s effective and based on prior learnings. An effective paid media strategy can offer a competitive edge if your finance brand is looking to maximise its social media content.

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