The news: The biggest banks will spend $6 billion or more on marketing in 2025, or 0.10% of their total asset value, per an analysis of the American Bankers Association Bank Marketers Survey in the ABA Banking Journal. On average, 32% of banks’ marketing budgets were allocated to new customer acquisition—more than any other allocation.

Spending corresponds to the size of marketing teams: According to the survey, banks in the $10+ billion club had on average 14 marketers on staff in 2025, far removed from the average of one for banks with less than $1B in assets.

The highest returns: Search engine marketing and optimization showed the strongest returns, which “may reflect shifting consumer behavior as more customers begin their banking journeys online,” per ABA. Wells Fargo, for example, has invested heavily in the top of its funnel for small businesses, including digital account opening.

What’s trending: Generative AI and LLM optimization have become more important as consumer behavior shifts from traditional search toward AI-based search. This means banks need to produce content optimized for “natural language queries" and “contextual relevance and authority”—while scrutinizing the value of traditional channels like direct mail, television, or out-of-home advertising.

Budget direction: Bank marketers expect to increase their budget allocations to digital advertising (82.1%), search engine marketing and optimization (82.1%), and social media (46.4%). AI search isn’t broken out as a separate category—it remains to be seen when bank marketers start considering it independently in budget plans.

Our take: Bank marketers are clearly focused on digital advertising, and with greater resources and scale, the largest institutions won’t find it hard to drive awareness, attract new customers digitally, and dominate the conversation. Community banks will need to be scrappy.