We grew up in financial services. Before AdNode was an agency we were the engineers hired to automate billing for the largest ad networks in the world, and our first clients as a media buyer were ETF sponsors and asset managers. Finance is still most of what we do.
Since 2018 we have planned and bought media for ETF sponsors, mutual fund companies, an annuity provider, wealth managers and fintech brands. The pattern is the same in each: a product that is hard to explain, a buyer who is hard to reach, and a CFO who wants to know what the money did.
What is different about finance
Two audiences, two plans
Advisors and investors do not read the same pages or watch the same hours. Advisor campaigns use publishers' own first-party advisor data on Barron's, Bloomberg, CNBC, Investopedia, IBD, MarketWatch and the Journal, bought through preferred deals and private auctions rather than at rate-card CPMs. Investor campaigns are built around the three 24-hour finance networks on connected TV and the news days that move attention.
AUM is not attributable, so we use proxies you can defend
No pixel fires when an advisor moves a client's money. So the objective is written in terms that can be measured: consideration and preference from a controlled brand study, engagement on the site from your own analytics, quote starts, and a closed-loop match of exposed households to accounts opened where the client can provide it.
Brand studies built to survive scrutiny
A control group, one targeting method per study, at least five million impressions, questions asked the standard way, and the confidence level printed next to every lift. A good study fits inside a $100,000 media budget. We presented the method at the Gramercy Institute: Brand campaigns that stand up to CFO scrutiny.
Compliance is the job, not a constraint
Disclosures in the creative, no targeting your privacy policy doesn't disclose, no data flows your compliance team hasn't seen. We are conservative on this by design, and we have never needed to be otherwise to get a result.
Direct deals, re-examined
Fixed-price sponsorships are common in finance and often underperform the same inventory bought by CPM. We audit every one against its alternative, and we keep the ones that earn it. For one ETF sponsor that meant cancelling most of the portfolio and rebuilding the best one around the unit that worked, at a 27% lower price.
Timing the market's attention
Federal Reserve announcement days, earnings weeks, and fund launches change what the audience reads and when. Homepage takeovers reserved for the eight FOMC days of the year reach more people than the same takeover on an ordinary Tuesday, at the same price.
What it has produced
- EQL, the ALPS Equal Sector Weight ETF: +33 points in likelihood to invest and +12.4 in brand preference among advisors, measured against a control group, for under $400,000 across display, connected TV and out-of-home. The study design and the out-of-home.
- Connected-TV brand campaigns for an annuity provider, measured by a controlled brand study and read by placement, so the next plan grows what lifted.
- Sponsorship audits for ETF sponsors: every fixed-price deal checked against its CPM alternative, the best one rebuilt around the unit that worked, at a lower negotiated price.
- Video ads that re-rendered with live sector data through the trading day, and the integration we built to run them. The case.
Results with figures are shared on a call, with the client’s permission.
What you see
Every channel in one place, organized around your objective: the brand study result or the account-opening figure on the first line, the engagement and funnel KPIs that predict it beneath, and reach, frequency and CPM as the diagnostics. How AI assistants describe your fund against its competitors, and what those competitors are running, sit next to your media. How We Measure shows the reporting.
Who it is for
Asset managers and ETF sponsors. Insurers and annuity providers. Banks, wealth managers and fintech brands with a media budget of $2 million a year or more, and a CMO who has to defend it.