Fund promotion dominates North American advertising landscape

Asset managers dedicated 82% of their overall advertising to fund promotion in Q2 2025, data by Fundamental Monitor shows

Key points:

• Fund promotion’s share of overall asset management advertising in North America grew to a record 82% during Q2 2025.
• ETF promotion also saw a record quarter, increasing to 75% in Q2 from 72% in Q1.
• The number of ETF advertisers remained stable at 43 advertisers.

Fund promotion’s share of overall asset management advertising in North America grew to a record 82% during Q2 2025, up from the previous record 72% in Q1, according to data by Fundamental Monitor.

This resulted in a further fall of the share of thought leadership promotion, from 15% in Q1 to 6% in Q2. Brand campaigns remained stable at 11%.

ETF promotion also saw a record quarter, increasing to 75% in Q2 from 72% in Q1. Equities advertising grew from 16% to 19%, the highest seen since Q3 2022, while fixed income promotion fell from 6% to 4%.

The number of ETF advertisers remained stable at 43 advertisers, while 24 asset managers promoted equities (up from 19 in Q1). Fixed income also saw a small increase in the number of active advertisers, from 22 to 23, while the number of ESG advertisers dropped to a record low of only two advertisers.

Data by Alphix Solutions shows that ETF content on asset managers’ websites received between 10.7% and 13.5% (depending on the week) of overall traffic during Q2. Traffic to equities content accounted for 4.2-7.7% from April to mid-June, but then increased sharply to almost 13.6% – overtaking ETF content consumption – before dropping to around 8.7% at the end of the quarter.

The consumption of fixed income content relative to overall content consumption rose throughout Q2, from 3.2% to 5.4%. Multi-asset content consumption hovered around 1% during the full quarter, while ESG content consumption increased slightly from around 1.4% at the start of April to 3.1% at the end of June.

Below are some examples of the type of campaigns that were in market in North America during Q2 2025:

Fund promotion – Grayscale

ETFs – Global X

Equities – Guardian Capital