More than a third of European advertising promoting fixed income

Brand campaigns accounted for more than half of asset management advertising in Q3 2024, according to data by Fundamental Monitor

Key points:

• Asset managers dedicated more than a third of their advertising in Europe to fixed income promotion during Q3 2024.
• Brand campaigns accounted for 55% of all asset management advertising, the highest percentage seen since Q2 2022, and up from 43% in Q2 2024.
• Although a higher share of overall advertising was dedicated to fixed income promotion, there were slightly fewer asset managers actively promoting this asset class: 27 compared to 29 a quarter earlier.

Asset managers dedicated 36% of their overall advertising in Europe to the promotion of fixed income during Q3 2024, up from 24% in Q2, data by Fundamental Monitor reveals.

Equities’ advertising share increased slightly from 5% in Q2 to 7% in Q3, while the promotion of ETFs fell from 11% to 4% during the same period. Asset managers also dedicated less of their overall advertising to the promotion of ESG: 8% compared to 17% in Q2.

Brand campaigns accounted for 55% of all asset management advertising, the highest percentage seen since Q2 2022, and up from 43% in Q2 2024. Meanwhile, the promotion of thought leadership dropped significantly from 41% to 18%, but fund promotion saw an increase from 16% to 27%.

Although a higher share of overall advertising was dedicated to fixed income promotion, there were slightly fewer asset managers actively promoting this asset class: 27 compared to 29 a quarter earlier.

The same number of managers were promoting equities during Q3, up from 25 in Q2, while the number of active ESG advertisers increased from 30 to 34.

Data by Alphix Solutions shows that investors’ content consumption on asset managers’ websites for the topics equities, fixed income and ETFs was lower than the 365-day rolling average. Equities content consumption was down by between 9% and 34%, depending on the week, while the consumption of ETF content was down by between 0.11% and 53%, with one week in August when consumption was up by 1% compared to the average. Fixed income content consumption was up by 9% for one week in July, but down by between 1% and 22% during the rest of the quarter.

Content consumption for the topics multi asset and ESG was much more mixed throughout Q3. Consumption of multi asset content was up by between 0.81% and 16% during the first five weeks of the quarter, but then became negative (between -2% and -14%) for the remainder of the quarter. ESG content consumption was between 2% and 21% higher than the average during mid-July until the end of August, but lower than average during all the other weeks.

Below are some examples of the type of campaigns that were in market in Europe during Q3 2024:

Brand campaign – PIMCO

Fund Promotion – Swisscanto

Fixed income – Capital Group

Equities – J.P. Morgan Asset Management