Leads in share of budgets spent on internet

By Jeremy Schlosberg

    More and more Americans have come to love the way the internet allows them to manage and invest their money—not to mention spend it—online.
   And the financial services industry has responded by becoming the industry with the largest proportion of its ad dollars online, according to a new report from AdRelevance.
    The report offers new information from Media Metrix, AdRelevance’s parent company, showing that traffic at financial sites increased at a rate of 27 percent between December 1999 and Feb. 2000; during the same time period, overall web traffic increased by a more modest 9 percent.
    By February, one-quarter of all web users were visiting financial sites, according to the report.
   Financial service advertisers are noticing this and have shifted more of their advertising online than companies in other industries. AdRelevance estimates that financial services companies spent 10 percent of the advertising budgets online in 1999.
   Across all industries, advertisers are typically spent only about 2 percent of their ad budgets online in 1999.
    The report, on the other hand, indicates that financial advertising decreased somewhat in February from where it was in January, and that financial advertising on the web in general grew at a slower rate over the past three months than general advertising on the internet.
    For the time period from December 1999 to February 2000, financial services remained the third-largest advertising category online as far as total share of ad impressions, behind web media and retail (see chart).
   The leading advertiser among financial services companies for the three months covered by the report was Wingspan Bank, an entirely online institution, which by itself accounted for 13 percent of the ad impressions in the category.
  The second leading financial services advertiser online was NextCard. Both Wingspan and NextCard were in the top 10 of all web advertisers for the period being measured—specifically No. 5 and No. 7.
    When advertising online, financial services companies concentrate on the major portals. 
    More than 75 percent of all ad impressions for financial services companies were delivered on portals. No one other genre of web site was even close. Second place was community sites, with just 8.1 percent of ad impressions.
    The category of business and finance itself delivered only 2.5 percent of all ad impressions for financial services companies.
   And what were these financial services companies busy advertising on the web? 
     Mostly credit cards. Seven of the top 10 advertised financial products or services were different institutions’ versions of a Visa or a MasterCard.

TOP 10 FINANCIAL SERVICES ADVERTISERS ONLINE BY IMPRESSIONS
Rank	Financial Services Co.	Ad Impressions	Share of Voice*
1	WingSpanBank.com	960,000,000	13%
2	NextCard	680,000,000	9%
3	AmeriDebt	500,000,000	7%
4	First USA	380,000,000	5%
5	HealthAxis.com	350,000,000	5%
6	GetSmart.com	350,000,000	5%
7	Ameritrade	320,000,000	4%
8	E*TRADE	320,000,000	4%
9	Fidelity Investments	290,000,000	4%
10	Capital One	260,000,000	4%
*Share of Voice measures an advertiser’s presence in the industry based on impressions. Source: AdRelevance

 

TOP 10 FINANCIAL SERVICES PRODUCTS/SERVICES ADVERTISED ONLINE
Rank	Product/Service	Ad Impressions	Share of Voice*
1	NextCard Visa	680,000,000	9%
2	WingspanBank.com	680,000,000	9%
3	GetSmart.com Mortgage Finder	310,000,000	4%
4	First USA Yahoo! Visa	290,000,000	4%
5	Capital One Visa	250,000,000	3%
6	Fidelity Investments Powerstreet	230,000,000	3%
7	Travelers Bank Netscape MasterCard	150,000,000	2%
8	Providian Financial Aria Visa	110,000,000	2%
9	FirstUSA e.card Visa	55,000,000	1%
10	Fleet Bank MasterCard	52,000,000	1%
*Share of Voice measures an advertiser’s presence in the industry based on impressions. Source: AdRelevance

- Jeremy Schlosberg is the senior editor for new media.