Banking industry paid ad impressions slump by 68% amid pandemic

Banking industry paid ad impressions slump by 68% amid pandemic

The banking advertising industry has been negatively impacted by the Coronavirus crisis even as other sectors of the economy continue to assess and project the full ramifications of the current pandemic. Based on data exclusively acquired by Buy Shares, there is a significant gap in paid ad impressions between the first 22 weeks of 2020 and last year.

The in-house data provided by the ad-tech company Setupad shows that between the first 22 weeks of 2020, the paid ad impression of the banking sector has declined by at least three times compared to a similar period last year. In total, this years’ review period has witnessed a total of 5,726,617 in paid ad impressions with an average of 260,300. The highest-paid impressions for the year were during week 13 at 425,217 while the lowest number was during week one at 103,576, a percentage difference of 121.65%. The figure then rose by 21.16% to hit 200,560 in week 22. During the first three weeks of this year, the impression was rising steadily from 103,576 in the first week to 310,970 in the third week.

The total paid ad impressions for 2020 represent a drop of about 68.57% when compared to last year’s total of 18,223,164. On average the banking industry had 828,325 paid ad impressions with the highest figure being recorded during the 17th week at 1,533,403. On the other hand, the lowest-paid ad impressions were in the first week at 229,746 before rising steadily as the year progressed. A quick snippet of the paid ad impressions for the sector shows that 2019 remained dominantly high when compared to 2020 meaning that advertisers are less interested in buying the impressions.

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Poland records highest banking ad impressions

The data highlights the drop in this year’s ad impressions began at the beginning of February. During this period, Coronavirus started spreading across the world, and measures of curbing the spread impacted the banking sector directly.

Our research also focused on the paid ad impression based on the country level where Poland emerged top with 219,809 impressions. Spain had the second-highest-paid impression at 215,627 followed by Lithuania’s 113,131. Fourth on the list was Hungary at 96,914 while France closes the top five categories with 60,380 paid ad impressions.

In the sixth spot, there is Ukraine with 37,742 impressions, followed by Canada at 35,172 to emerge as the only country outside Europe in the top ten slots. Other notable bank paid impressions came from Slovakia (28471), Germany (25090), and Moldovia (19132). The paid ad impressions were recorded from May 2nd to May 31st, 2020.

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Effects of Covid-19 on banking

In the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic, the financial sector has faced several challenges on different fronts. There is less activity in banking halls due to social distancing requirements. Few customers are being served in physical branches. At the same time, there is a strain on support systems like telephone and email. People are reaching out to banks with queries, concerns, and requests for special measures as their finances have been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Customers have lost jobs translating lost income while others are staring at defaulting loans and missing mortgage payments. This lack of inactivity might explain the drop in paid ad impression.

Most authorities have been advocating for non-physical banking as a means of curbing the spread of the virus. However, most traditional banks do have this capacity. In this case, innovations like challenger banks come into play but challenges like inadequate funding have acted as a barrier to meet full capacity.

Although the full impact of Coronavirus on the economy is yet to be determined, the banking and financial sector, in general, remains the safety net against any economic free fall. As a strategy of moving out of the pandemic, banks need to guide customers on how to manage the impact of the virus until things return to normalcy.

At the moment, banks have the responsibility of reviewing the needs of people and determine the best products for them in the short and medium-term. They have an opportunity to support the market and economic activity and to facilitate a return to stability.

The data on paid ad impressions in the banking sector was exclusively acquired from Setupad, a company that develops and operates header-bidding technology. At the moment, the company serves more than three billion ad impressions monthly.