Financial media networks (FMNs) are advertising platforms that leverage financial institutions’ (FIs’) proprietary data to target personalized ads to customers in the FI’s channels. FMNs are modeled on retail media networks (RMNs) pioneered by Amazon and Walmart. But unlike RMNs, FMNs capture retailer-agnostic data—and therefore a fuller picture of customers’ spending, as written in our "Banking Trends to Watch in H2 2024" report. Many FMNs are being built on top of existing reward programs and have built-in reward functionalities alongside advertising.
FMNs let banks tap a lucrative advertising opportunity. US digital ad spending will surpass $452 billion by the end of 2028, per our forecast, and FMNs prime banks to capture some of that spend. That’s a compelling prize as high interest rates continue to curb banks’ lending profits.
FMNs are starting to go mainstream. A handful of FIs, including Klarna and Revolut, have been developing FMNs since 2023. But in spring 2024, financial titans Chase and PayPal each launched one, positioning FMNs as an industry game changer.
Growing demand and regulatory clarity will encourage more FMN launches this year. Advertisers will need more first-party data, thanks to ad targeting restrictions from the American Privacy Rights Act and Google’s ongoing changes to how it handles third-party cookies on Chrome. And the arrival of formalized open banking in the US will empower more FIs to ask customers’ permission to use their data for advertising.
FMNs will remain an ad spending niche—but a booming one. From 2024 to 2026, FMN ad spend will explode at a 107.0% compound annual growth rate to hit $1.50 billion, per our forecast. While that will only account for 0.4% of US digital ad spending, the growth rate illustrates the space’s enormous potential.
Consider leveraging data from products like mortgages, insurance policies, and investments to improve FMNs’ ad targeting capabilities. No bank currently uses data from these products in its FMN, but it should be their endgame. Other FMN operators—like payment companies—don’t have this option, so it can be a major differentiator for banks in appealing to advertisers.
Prioritize reassuring regulators that their FMNs aren’t stepping on consumers’ privacy and data rights. The CFPB is already wary of FIs using customer data for FMNs and warns of their potential for “financial surveillance.” To allay concerns, banks should require customers to explicitly opt in to their data being used to personalize ads rather than automatically opting them in and then offering the choice to opt out.
Read more in the full report, "Banking Trends to Watch in H2 2024."