Europe again sees record number of ESG advertisers during Q3

Brand campaigns continue to be the most popular, followed by fund promotion

Key points:

A record number of asset managers were advertising their ESG capabilities
The number of advertisers promoting fixed income or ETFs were the highest since the start of 2020
Brand campaigns continue to be the most popular, followed by fund promotion and insights

A record number of asset managers (46) were advertising their ESG capabilities in Europe during Q3, data from Fundamental Monitor shows.

Europe saw an increase in the number of advertisers actively promoting each of the strategies monitored by Fundamental Monitor, apart from multi-asset. A record number of asset managers were advertising their ESG capabilities, while the number of advertisers promoting fixed income (19) and ETFs (12) were the highest since the start of 2020.

Q3 2021 Europe active advertisers

Apart from a major sponsorship campaign by Vontobel, the type of advertising campaigns European asset managers favoured during Q3 remained similar compared to Q2.

Europe saw high advertising volumes during Q3, but the figure is distorted because of Vontobel’s sponsorship campaign for bonus certificates, which involves them having a display ad within the market figures on every single page of Finanzen.net in Germany.

If the Vontobel bonus certificates campaign is set aside, the figures for Europe are very steady, with similar proportions of ad purpose compared to Q2. At 45%, brand campaigns continue to be the most popular, followed by fund promotion at 35% and insights at 19%.

Q3 2021 Europe ad purpose

When it comes to the advertising of specific strategies, asset managers spent less of their advertising budget on promoting all of the key strategies. At 4%, fixed income was slightly ahead of equities (3%), but both were low compared to earlier quarters. ESG volumes were also down somewhat, but yet again a record number of advertisers (46) contributed to the ESG volume.

Q3 2021 Europe key strategies