North America sees a record share of ETF advertising

The number of asset managers promoting ETFs was also at a record high during Q4 2024

Key points:

• Asset managers dedicated a record 58% of their overall North American advertising to the promotion of ETFs during Q4 2024.
• There were 48 asset managers who were actively promoting ETFs during Q4, a record number and significantly up from the 31 advertisers seen in Q3 2024, which was the previous record.
• Despite this heavy advertising focus on ETFs, data by Alphix Solutions, Fundamental Group’s marketing technology business, shows that investors’ interest in this topic was below average during this quarter.

Asset managers dedicated a record 58% of their overall North American advertising to the promotion of ETFs during Q4 2024, which is the highest percentage seen since the start of 2020, data by Fundamental Monitor has found.

Meanwhile, equities advertising accounted for 9% of all asset management advertising, up from 7% in Q3, and the promotion of fixed income made up 8% of the overall share, up from 5% a quarter earlier.

There were 48 asset managers who were actively promoting ETFs during Q4, a record number and significantly up from the 31 advertisers seen in Q3 2024, which was the previous record.

At 23, equities also saw an increase in the number of advertisers, up from 14 in Q3. The number of fixed income advertisers stayed the same at 28, while three asset managers promoted multi asset (down from four in Q3) and five managers advertised ESG (up from three in Q3).

When it comes to the ad purpose, asset managers pivoted back towards fund promotion, with 64% of their North American advertising dedicated to this. Both brand campaigns and insights promotion therefore decreased, to 22% and 11%, respectively.

However, while asset managers have been heavily advertising ETFs in the North American market, data by Alphix Solutions, Fundamental Group’s marketing technology business, shows that investors’ interest in this topic was below average during this quarter.

From October until half December, the consumption of ETF content on asset managers’ websites was between 17% and 41% lower than the 365-day rolling average, depending on the week, with only the last two weeks of December seeing an increase in average content consumption (by only 4-6%).

Content consumption for equities and fixed income were much more of a mixed bag. The consumption of equities content varied between -7% and 14% throughout the quarter, while fixed income content was consumed more than average during the first three weeks of the quarter (by between 4-6%) and less than average during the remainder of Q4 (by between -2% and -35%).

Multi asset content consumption was up throughout the quarter, by between 3% and 25%, while ESG content consumption was mostly above average throughout Q4 as well, with only a few weeks where consumption was 3-4% lower than average.

Below are some examples of the type of campaigns that were in market in North America during Q4 2024:

ETF – Grayscale

Equities – T. Rowe Price

Fund promotion – State Street Global Advisors