WHICH BANK IS AUSTRALIA’S MOST EFFICIENT DIGITAL ADVERTISER

A look at the top 10 Banks in Australia….

Brands spend a great deal of money on advertising to change people’s minds and behaviours – and digital is increasingly the dominant channel.?

The banking industry is no exception. In the 12 months to August 31st?the top 10 banks delivered around 9.2 billion impressions and spent over $50 million to do so. In turn this, along with just under $15 million spent on ‘search’ and also organic traffic, delivered 204 million unique visitors to their websites.?

AdClarity & Similarweb have pooled their data to create a measure that explores how effective the advertising of each of these brands has been in delivering unique traffic to their website. We have compared impressions bought with unique visitors to each website the banks used and generated a ratio where 1 is where share of voice or % of impressions bought (SOV) equals share of behaviours or % of unique visitors (SOB). The most efficient brands generated SOB greater than SOV, while the less efficient brands had higher SOV than SOB. The rationale for the measure is explained in more detail below.

Unsurprisingly the big 4 were the top spenders and had the largest share of voice. However only 3 of the big 4 were the top performers in terms of driving unique traffic (share of behaviour). Bendigo Bank & ING’s efficiency ranking was higher than their spend ranking – 4th?& 5th?vs 7th?& 8th?while NAB and Bankwest showed poor efficiency for their spend.

Some highlights around the category as a whole…

●??????9.2B impressions in 12 months to July 31st?2021

●??????>$50M spent on digital?advertising?with >1000 publishers

●??????~$14.8M spent on ‘Search’

●??????Top publishers were Facebook, YouTube, and Realestate.com.au with >2B impressions each and accounting for 2/3 of total impressions.

●??????29% of ad impressions were display ads –?

o???2.5B impressions and 16% of spend?across 980 publishers

o???<50% of these were delivered ‘Above the fold’ – ie visible without scrolling

●??????41% of impressions were ads in Videos –?

o???3.5B impressions and 57% of spend?across 115 publishers

o???YouTube delivered over 2.1B of these impressions across desktop and mobile apps, with Realestate.com.au delivering a further 1 in 3.

o???Ads were seen across 809 YouTube channels with the top 5 (Sukumaya TV, Roadplanet, Kin4K, ChubbyDino, and HighlightsNepal) delivering ~7% of total and attracting almost $500k in spend. None of these channels appear to be suitable channels to use to promote banking products.

o???82% of these were delivered before the ‘main video’ (10% were at the end)

●??????31% were delivered in Social Media –?

o???2.7B impressions, 27% of spend?across 3 publishers – Facebook, Twitter, & Instagram

o???Facebook delivered over 90% of these impressions, highlighting its dominance as a platform for banks.

We also had a look at a range of factors that impact relative performance.

Ad Types:

AdClarity data showed that at a total level, advertising was almost evenly split across Social, Video and Banner ads with around 30% of impressions in each. We did however observe marked differences in the mix of channels used by the different banks, suggesting different strategies to reach and appeal to their media target. It also demonstrates different thinking around the role of context.

NAB used a considerably smaller proportion of total spend on social compared to the other big 4 banks and far less than St George who delivered 75% of impressions bought on social platforms.

Mebank, Bendigo & Bankwest delivered more than half of their impressions in video (YouTube in particular), perhaps trying to reach Australians in lockdown. BOQ hardly used video at all.

BOQ and ING both delivered more than 3 in 4 of their impressions in Banner ads.

Buying Methods:

The vast majority of impressions bought by the banks were delivered ‘programmatically’ indicating significant faith in this method to deliver their messages to their audience. Much of this was within Facebook, Instagram, and other walled gardens and also using the Google network. Further, the majority of ‘Direct’ (realestate.com.au being the standout) and also ‘Ad Network’ bought ads were also delivered programmatically. Again, we saw significant differences across the banks.

Placement:

AdClarity also showed marked differences in the ‘quality’ of ad space bought, reducing the likelihood of being seen by the audience. In ‘display’ we saw four banks delivering less than 50% of their display ads visible without scrolling. Similarly, two brands saw less than 50% of their video ads shown either mid or post roll.

Spend on “Search”

Similarweb, as well as website traffic data also surfaces search words & spend for desktop that provides additional insights into brands strategies.

Brands spend a significant amount to optimise ‘search’ outcomes and drive additional traffic to their sites - and the banks are no different. Paid search works in conjunction with paid advertising - either as a direct source of traffic or an adjunct to advertising - advertising influencing later searches for relevant products or services.?

Across the category, search spend was the equivalent of 30% of digital advertising spend, at $14.8 million. The Banks’ spend on search largely mirrors online advertising spend but with a few exceptions. While NAB bought the most impressions by some margin, CBA outspent them on search. ING spent >70% of their advertising spend on search. The three poorest performers on the efficiency metric also had the lowest mix of spend of search vs digital advertising at less than 10%.

The Rationale behind our Ad Efficiency Measure:

Brands have visibility of what they are doing, but far fewer see what their competitors are doing and understand how this impacts their brand’s performance. Indeed it could be said that this ‘opaqueness’ is a key part of the business model for the publishers - to encourage greater activity and spend from advertisers while also allowing obfuscation around effectiveness, reach, and targeting.?

AdClarity & Similarweb are independent providers of digital intelligence – we do not necessarily depend on the cooperation of third parties to compile data to help advertisers understand the competitive landscape in a fully transparent way.

While digital advertising promised easy to see ROI, this has largely not been realised. Particularly in terms of a competitive context. If we accept that the primary imperative of any digital advertising is to drive traffic to the advertiser’s website, we can go some way to understanding whether or not a brand’s digital advertising is working.

Leading digital intelligence providers AdClarity (advertising) and Similarweb (web traffic and source) have pooled resources to create an easy-to-understand efficiency measure – a surrogate for ROI when it is not feasible to also factor in the appeal of the product/s themselves.

Our combined resources shed significant light on this complex and largely invisible space. In simplest terms AdClarity provides intelligence on the paid advertising that ‘causes’ changes in web traffic while Similarweb provides search spend and traffic source, surfacing the ‘effect’ in terms of daily web traffic.

With both cause and effect, in a competitive context, we can start to unpack how well brands are performing and some of the factors that are contributing to this.

Determining ROI is also (as in other media) challenging due to the fact that sometimes the effect is neither immediate nor linear. Rather it is cumulative – parked away for later reference.?

While third party cookies may be on their way out, programmatic remains the dominant buying/delivery method for online advertising. While this approach can ‘follow’ a target market, the context or timing may not be right to ‘cause’ a behaviour immediately. Further, due to imprecision resulting from devices/IP addresses used by multiple people, ads bought in this way can end up in some very strange places.

That said, if brands spend money effectively (i.e. create interest) they should expect increased traffic to their website. If the product or service is appealing and the site is easy enough to use, they should expect to sell more.

There are, of course, a number of factors that impact this efficiency which the combination of Similarweb and AdClarity digital intelligence can address.?

●??????Does the brand have latent appeal vs its competitors?

●??????Did they spend enough (vs competitors)?

●??????Did they buy in the right channels/publishers?

o???Targeting the right market

o???Delivering?the right context (don’t sell me superannuation when I am relaxing)

●??????Was the advertising engaging – cut-through, branding, motivation?

●??????Is the product/service compelling/valued?

If they get the above right, brands will see hard ROI in terms of traffic and if the product/service is?compelling, a brand will see ROI in sales.

Ben Sullivan, Managing Director AdClarity Pty Ltd