Over the past 10-15 years, the retail brokerage industry has grown and consolidated in parallel with the rise of online platforms that allow investors to directly trade and research a wide range of financial securities. It has become a fiercely competitive category for marketers, all of whom are competing to attract active investors by differentiating their online offerings, primarily on the basis of technology innovation and service enhancements. Having built out a scalable trading infrastructure, the P&L performance for online brokerages tends to be driven by the economies of scale associated with more customers conducting more trades.

Three of the most prominent advertisers in this category are E-Trade, Scottrade and TD Ameritrade. Each invests significant monies in media advertising, through digital and non-digital channels, in an effort to promote their online trading products. The broad strategic goals are to generate awareness, solidify brand identify, and acquire and retain retail brokerage customers. 

Kantar Media has tapped its industry-leading database of advertising intelligence to analyze the recent consumer media campaigns from these three marketers, with a particular emphasis on their utilization of Paid Search. Kantar Media is the first and only research company to provide insights on Paid Search activity as a syndicated service. 

Highlights from the analysis include:

• An increase in Paid Search budgets even as total media ad spend has been slashed;
• Seasonal variations in the volume of keyword clicks
• The contrast between branded keywords and generic keywords at generating clicks
• Top generic keywords and the surprising performance of terms associated with retirement investing 
• The main message points featured in Paid Search text ads and message integration strategies across Paid Search, Internet Display and multimedia advertising.

1. Total Media Spending

Through the first eight months of 2011, total ad expenditures at Scottrade and TD Ameritrade are down sharply from a year ago. Only E-Trade has maintained its spending rate.

The spending reductions at TD Ameritrade have coincided with a slowdown in new customer acquisitions, according to company statistics. Conversely, E-Trade has reported a modest increase in the number of accounts.

2. Budgets Moving Toward Paid Search

All three marketers have increased their Paid Search budgets by more than 100% in 2011, even as total ad expenditures have been cut. The timing of the gains has been identical at each advertiser. Looking back at the monthly flow of Paid Search spending in 2010, there was an initial ramp up by in October and then a further, steeper escalation in January 2011 which has continued into Q3.

Even with these enormous rates of increase, the share of budget currently earmarked to Paid Search varies widely by marketer. E-Trade allocates a smaller share because the company remains heavily invested in Television advertising and its “Talking Baby” campaign. Scottrade puts more than 80% of its ad budget into digital media but has recently been shifting dollars from Paid Search to Display. TD Ameritrade is also oriented towards digital media but favors Paid Search over Display.

3. Paid Search Keyword Strategies

Kantar Media’s monitoring includes keyword activity. Each month we report estimated clicks by keyword for the top 250 keywords for each of the top 20,000 subdomains. We map subdomains back to the appropriate advertiser and product in our harmonized, multi-media database.

For online brokers, the standard goal of Paid Search campaigns is acquiring new customers. There is a natural seasonality to customer enrollments that reflects investor interest and decision-making around online trading services. Registration peaks occur in Q4 and Q1, and then fall back during Q2 and Q3.The volume of keyword clicks tracks these seasonal skews.

As click counts decrease, the proportion of clicks generated by top keywords goes up. Because the leading category advertisers have high brand awareness, the best performing terms are their own branded keywords (including spelling variants). “Branded keywords” are those that derive from the name of the brand itself. For example, branded terms for TD Ameritrade include “ameritrade”, “ameri trade”, “ameritrade.com”, “tdameritrade” and “td ameritrade”. 

The table below shows how these patterns have played out in 2011. Since we only have two months of data for Q3, click counts have been computed on an average monthly basis for the sake of comparability.

Generic Keywords

For each of the three advertisers, the terms “stock”, “stocks” and” stock market” are regularly among the Top 5 generic keywords, based on number of monthly clicks. In addition, a group of generic terms associated with retirement products (IRA, Roth IRA and 401k) are also in the Top 5. The only generic keyword that is in the Top 5 for just a single marketer is “trading” (E-Trade).

Keyword Creative

While the leading online brokerages rely on similar keyword strategies to generate clicks, the text ads shown in response to those clicks have material and consistent differences.

An analysis of text ads from two weeks in October 2011 reveals a handful of core selling propositions that repeatedly appeared in each advertiser’s search creative, regardless of the keywords that led to the ads.

We then extended our examination to include ads running in other media (internet display, TV, magazines, newspapers) during the same interval. We wanted to find out if marketers were emphasizing the same selling points across all the media forms it used.

For Scottrade, the dominant search claim was “$7 Online Trades” backed up by “no hidden fees” and “no share limit”. This low-cost positioning also appeared frequently in the company’s online display ads, whether as a primary or secondary message point. Online display and TV commercials were also used to promote features and benefits of their trading software platform.

For TD Ameritrade, the most prevalent search message points were “straightforward pricing” and “powerful tools”. TV ads supported these themes with introductory offers for free trading and selling claims about Trade Architect, an advanced trading software platform for elite investors. Online display ads also featured Trade Architect and extended the technology theme even further with dedicated messages for a mobile phone application.

E-Trade text copy in search ads was more diverse. Selling propositions included promotional offers for commission-free trading, the availability of analytic and research tools, and investor education resources. These message points were replicated throughout magazine and online display ads.  E-Trade also promoted its “Pro Elite” advanced trading software platform via a series of internet display ads.

Two different TV campaigns from E-Trade were airing during this period and they diverged from other messaging. A rotation of creative executions from the “Talking Baby” campaign alternated between general branding/image building and more specific claims about particular E-Trade features. The companion campaign used the tag line “Investing Unleashed” and emphasized the need for individual investors to take control and be self-directed.

Kantar Media’s analysis of trends in digital advertising is based on our monitoring of multimedia and the entire digital advertising marketplace, including display, video, ad networks and paid search. 

About Kantar Media

Established in more than in 50 countries, Kantar Media enables exploration of multimedia momentum through analysis of print, radio, TV, Internet, social media, and outdoors worldwide. Kantar Media offers a full range of media insights and audience measurement services through its global business sectors – Intelligence, Audiences and TGI & Custom.  Combining the deepest expertise in the industry, Kantar Media tracks more than 3 million brands and delivers insights to more than 22,000 customers aroundthe world.

Download PDF