The world of finance has taken quite a spin in recent years, hasn’t it? With the rise of financial technology, we’ve (almost) forgotten the hell of contacting call centers, waiting for months to complete an international transaction, and spending Friday afternoons in the bank queue.

But let’s not forget: the fintech domain is a fiercely competitive battlefield. Just one swift scroll through the finance category of any App/Play Store, and the user’s eyes will diverge before sticking with just one service. 

So, how do you cut through this hyper-competitive noise and make your app the next flagship of fintech? Maybe, the answer is programmatic.

This article will discuss the current state of fintech mobile apps, the peculiarities of working with programmatic, and whether incorporating it into your marketing strategy may accelerate the fintech app growth in the long run.

The Unstoppable Growth of Fintech Advertising

The infinity of offers in fintech isn’t just some metaphor to spice up this text. The extension of the industry is obvious even to those not involved in it. Why don’t we talk numbers to make things clearer?

With about 26300 startups globally, by 2024, the global fintech market will reach at least $201.9 billion. That’s a 100% growth rate compared to 2017. 

But wait, there’s more! Fintech services are not just making a splash; they’re making waves. 96% of consumers are aware of fintech services globally. 64% of them have been using at least one of the fintech platforms. 50 million people use Apple Pay regularly in the US, and 23 million use its counterpart – Google Pay.  

In 2021, worldwide downloads of fintech apps reached 6.1 billion, with Venmo and Cash App being the leaders and generating $850 million and $12.3 billion, respectively. JPMorgan Chase has 50 million active mobile users, and Bank of America – 35.5 million. 

4 Great Obstacles to Successful Fintech Advertising

Fintech goes hard, and there are no reasons for it to stop growing. However, with at least 30,000 fintech startups by the end of 2022, how many will actually turn out successful? 

The sheer size and variety of fintech create a standard list of challenges hanging on the wall of the marketing department and causing explicit levels of cortisol in the room. Some of these difficulties include:

In this particular survey, fintech marketers state their biggest challenge is acquiring high-quality leads and customers. It doesn’t take a genius to understand why, so we won’t speculate much.

The highly competitive sphere with numerous companies offering similar services, widespread financial illiteracy among users, and brand trust issues caused by the industry’s novelty – add all of this up, and you’ll have a hard-to-chew sandwich of customer acquisition.

Customer acquisition is also expensive. Large banks usually spend up to $2000 to get a customer. With fintech app businesses, the price is a bit lower, but it still tops $800 if the cost of teasers and bonus points is included. The ever-rising expenses lead to ever-lowering budgets for the marketing teams.

Yeah, that’s quite dull since marketing is the bread and butter in B2B and B2C, but the fintech industry moves very fast, and if something doesn’t bring rapid progress, it gets cut. Don’t forget about the difficulties of finding niche-specific traffic sources; you’ll have a clear vision of why keeping CPA low is a primary goal of all media buying campaigns.

The realm of advertising is often unfriendly to fintech, and its laws and regulations are where it shows most. Crypto-related advertising and ICOs face limitations by major advertising platforms like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Those restrictions were implemented a while ago to prevent fraud, but even credible crypto businesses are regular subjects to these policies.

Fintech apps that provide loans or credit services may encounter similar fraud-scam regulations in ads. Fintech apps that offer banking/investment solutions might be required to include disclaimers and disclosure in their advertising materials. Fintech apps that handle sensitive information… you should’ve guessed already.

Fintech applications have about 22.7% user retention on day 1, decreasing to 5.8% on day 30. And it’s not something a marketer could close their eyes to, and this ain’t a Flashlight app.

Sending funds, paying debts, or managing finance generate money; thus, low retention = reduced income. Remember the credibility issues we’ve mentioned before? Returning users are the best brand advocates in the long run, and their feedback is paramount to keeping up with the industry pace. 

How Programmatic May Benefit Fintech Apps [Case Studies]

According to a recent study, the banking sphere puts extreme stress on its employees, and if fintech marketers struggle with all the challenges above, imagine what life’s like in the other sectors.

So could programmatic media buying make life easier for the fintech marketing department and bring tangible results? Spoiler: yes, case studies show it does, and here’s a brief summary of why:

Programmatic Cost-Effectiveness 

Automated bidding and real-time optimization allow advertisers to reach their target audience cost-effectively.  Some DSPs even allow using bidding multipliers to set automatic bids on media, thus minimizing expensive conversions.

For instance, Fintonic has achieved its CPA goal using its proprietary DSP. With the help of creative A/B testing and audience targeting, the company has reached its campaign performance goal, along with making its advertising more transparent and wide.

Programmatic Boosts User Engagement

Paysend’s goal was to acquire new customers and have users who’d send money via their app. Paysend needed high retention and engagement rates, so they used Mapendo’s DSP.

During the first weeks of the campaign app install rate increased by 200%. Along with exceeding Paysend’s KPI growth and reg-to-money transfer goals, the collaboration brought 10% cheaper eCPI in North America and drove up the registration rate by 176% within the first month.

Regulation Compliance

As you’ve seen, there are a lot of troubles regarding compliance with regulations in fintech. Advanced programmatic platforms can provide tools to ensure compliance, like setting custom targeting parameters, ad content filters, and ad placement preferences.

Moreover, DSPs might come with a variety of SSPs to choose from. For example, Epom white-label DSP’s client in crypto struggled with scaling an active user base due to limitations from significant ad platforms. 

With the help of Epom WL DSP, they found and established custom end-points with vertical-specific traffic sources, thus boosting the app install rate by 150% while meeting the expected CPA goal.

What to Expect from Fintech Advertising?

In the end, nothing’s perfect, and even programmatic might have drawbacks. The sphere has its part of unreliable solutions and fraud, plus the complexity of programmatic will require a deep understanding of what’s going on.

Still, automated media buying is one of the best shots for fintech advertising on the current playground. As much as we don’t want to upset our colleagues, the third-party data is fading away, and limitations keep getting more tense. Fintech app developers will probably have even more advertising-related troubles in the future.

The good news is that programmatic doesn’t stagnate as well. New formats like DOOH and IoT could present new ways to hyper-target users and gather more enhanced data. Stay vigilant. The changes are coming.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by alphatradezone; Pexels; Thank you!