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Rob Rubin (00:00):

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(00:28):

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Banking and Payments Show, A Behind the Numbers podcast from EMARKETER. Today is August 12th, 2025. I'm Rob Rubin, Head of Business Development at EMARKETER and your host. Today, we're going to talk about the promise and challenges financial media networks face in the burgeoning commerce media network landscape. Joining me today are principal Commerce Media Analyst, Sarah Marzano and Max Willens, a Senior Analyst on our Advertising and Media Team. Hey there, Sarah and Max. How you doing?

Max Willens (00:58):

Yeah, thanks for having us, Rob.

Sarah Marzano (00:59):

I'm good. Thanks for having me.

Rob Rubin (01:00):

Yeah, I'm so happy to have you guys. I pointed out earlier it's our 59th Banking and Payments Show and it's the first time either of you have been on, so I'm super excited.

Sarah Marzano (01:11):

And I'm trying not to take it personally.

Rob Rubin (01:13):

Right. Well, we're hitting on a topic for you, right? I don't think you would've liked a lot-

Sarah Marzano (01:18):

[inaudible 00:01:18] my way into this space.

Rob Rubin (01:19):

I don't think you would've liked a lot like some of the payments topics I think are interesting, you might not have loved them.

Sarah Marzano (01:25):

Fair.

Rob Rubin (01:25):

But I wanted to let the audience get to know you a little bit more and have some fun with a little icebreaker. True-false. So, you can each give me your answer, but true or false, FinTechs now control nearly half of all US personal loan debt.

Max Willens (01:43):

I think that's true.

Rob Rubin (01:44):

True or false?

Sarah Marzano (01:44):

False.

Max Willens (01:46):

Yeah, really, I-

Sarah Marzano (01:46):

[inaudible 00:01:48] icebreaker but our personality, [inaudible 00:01:49].

Max Willens (01:48):

Yeah, I was expecting a boxers or briefs, sort of thing.

Sarah Marzano (01:52):

We're just going to erode our own credibility as guests on this podcast right out of the gate.

Rob Rubin (01:57):

So, it's true.

Sarah Marzano (01:57):

[inaudible 00:02:00].

Rob Rubin (02:00):

FinTechs hold 49% of all US personal loan debt, compared to just 22% for banks. True or false, about one in four consumers say their bank can anticipate their need.

Max Willens (02:11):

What for?

Sarah Marzano (02:11):

True.

Max Willens (02:12):

I guess I'll also say true.

Rob Rubin (02:14):

That is right. Only 22% of consumers say their bank can anticipate their needs. We'll get more of that later. True or false, trust in Apple for financial services has declined over the past year.

Max Willens (02:29):

I think that's true.

Sarah Marzano (02:29):

I'm just going to go with false to keep it interesting.

Max Willens (02:30):

Ah.

Rob Rubin (02:32):

You are correct, Sarah. It is false. Trust in Apple actually increased from 13.9% to 19.8%.

Max Willens (02:38):

Is that surprising then that, because the bank that underwrites their banking business is changing, isn't it?

Rob Rubin (02:44):

Goldman? I think it is.

Max Willens (02:45):

That seems funny, they-

Rob Rubin (02:46):

But we've always, it's the question about trusting Apple. I don't think a lot of companies know who the underwriter is or think about it that way.

Sarah Marzano (02:55):

No.

Rob Rubin (02:55):

That was fun.

Sarah Marzano (02:56):

But we're tied

Rob Rubin (02:58):

You guys were, yeah, I guess.

Sarah Marzano (03:00):

We need a winner.

Rob Rubin (03:02):

So competitive. Let's get right to our first segment, Story By Numbers. In Story By Numbers, I pick a few numbers to help us frame the topic, and today my first number is 1.78 billion, and this is our forecast for 2027 ad revenue to financial media networks. That's a lot. To put that in perspective, this year we forecast financial media network ad revenue at 0.64 billion, so not even a billion. So the growth is like 3X over the next two years, and I think we should start there. Sarah, who are the players in the game that are getting all this?

Sarah Marzano (03:49):

Yeah, so it's a fascinating question to answer. This is a really nascent space, so there aren't many players that make up this cohort of FMNs and they represent a really diverse array of types of financial companies. So you have everyone from traditional financial institutions like Chase, who have their Chase Media Network, to payment transaction providers like PayPal, as well as the buy now, pay laters like Klarna, who have set up commerce media businesses.

Rob Rubin (04:17):

Max, who would want to advertise on these platforms?

Max Willens (04:20):

Well, at the moment the answer is affiliate marketers for in a lot of cases. I think a little bit about, so a couple of years ago, Chase bought a company called Fig that was designed to facilitate card-linked offers, and which is a small but important slice of the affiliate marketing ecosystem. And so a lot of the sort of ads that you see when you pop up in your Chase app for example, are there because of an old relationship between Fig and an advertiser. And it's a very diverse set of advertisers, right?

Rob Rubin (04:55):

It is.

Max Willens (04:55):

I mean, you can find restaurants, you can find Apple, you can find luggage companies.

Rob Rubin (05:00):

Find groceries,

Max Willens (05:01):

You can find apparel. There you go. And then to speak to Sarah's point, what I think what is so interesting about this space is that you also have a completely different sort of base of advertisers for PayPal ads, for example. Right? I mean, you have people that want to tap into their data. You also too, I think there's over the near to medium term, an opportunity for PayPal's, I guess merchants as an endemic category to do some advertising there. So, one of the things that I think is going to help PayPal grow so quickly is that they spent long quixotic period trying to deepen their services relationship with the merchants that they served. And those kind of inroads I think might help turn those folks into advertisers as well. So, the answer at the moment is a little bit of everybody, but everybody is spending just a little without being too cute about it.

Sarah Marzano (05:51):

Yeah, I like the way you put that, and I think you teed up a good point, which is this important sort of distinction. It could be very tempting to at every commerce media player as someone who's in direct competition with retail media, but the advertisers on financial media networks are going to look different because it's not just individual brands who these institutions are courting. Right? It could be the retailers themselves. And I know we'll get into this, but for the retailers, there is the access to the data around that cross-merchant shopping that's really appealing.

(06:24):

So, I always use the example like Macy's and Nordstrom. If you're Nordstrom and you want to make sure you're getting in front of someone who's a regular Macy's shopper but doesn't shop with you very often.

Rob Rubin (06:32):

Conquesting, yes.

Sarah Marzano (06:33):

That's an exciting opportunity that financial media networks can provide.

Rob Rubin (06:37):

It brings me to the point in our little true-false, is that only 22% of consumers thinks banks are good at anticipating their needs. So, why will banks be good at that? The affiliate thing, it's like, I sort of went through it, feels a little bit like they're just throwing spaghetti against the wall. It's like, yeah, we'll give 10% off anybody who clicks through, and that's an always-on campaign. That's not the same thing as running an omnichannel retail media campaign.

Max Willens (07:10):

Yep.

Sarah Marzano (07:11):

Yeah, and I think that's one of the biggest challenges that these players face. I think the ability to create highly personalized offers is not the same as being good at it now. And I think one of the biggest challenges here, especially because if you think about the way consumers are interacting with these companies, it's not necessarily with a high purchase intent. Right? If you think about why you're opening up your credit card app, it's probably not with shopping in mind. And the reason I bring that up is because it increases the necessity of creating offers that feel so personalized that it drives someone to take an action that they weren't necessarily planning on taking.

Max Willens (07:47):

Yeah, I loved that question and the true-false thing, only because I prefer not to think that my bank is trying to anticipate my needs. I just want them to allow me to pile up points so that I can go on a vacation every once in a while. But I think Sarah summarized the challenge that's in front of them.

Rob Rubin (08:05):

We'll get back to that too, piling up points, that's a point that I want to get back to in terms of consumer behavior when we get to our next segment.

(08:12):

But I wanted to throw a second number out, which is 92.24 billion, giant number, and it's our forecast for media in the same year that we've been talking about, 2027. So if you look at the 1.78 billion, that's less than 2% of the total, so it gets to what we've been talking about. If that's the case, why are financial media networks so important to understand?

Max Willens (08:36):

Well, I think Sarah did a good job of laying it out, but I'll steal some of her points and just say that they, from a data standpoint in terms of the depth and variety of data that they sit on, the picture that they can paint of their users is pretty unparalleled. Right? I mean, even Amazon which sells one of almost everything, probably multiple kinds of everything, can't provide full visibility into the things the person does to entertain themselves, where they go when they travel, what kinds of coffee they get in the morning. And a financial institution can absolutely provide that level of granularity and information.

(09:15):

And so, as advertisers continue to look to get smarter about who they target, how they find incremental customers, understanding all that stuff, that makes financial media networks a kind of uniquely attractive partner. And they also happen too, to be a partner that isn't necessarily tied into a relationship that you might have as part of a joint business plan if you're a CPG company. It allows you to play a wider field potentially, and that makes them, I think potentially quite attractive, but I'm sure Sarah's got more on that as well.

Sarah Marzano (09:48):

I mean, I think one of the things I was going to say is that you're absolutely right, that when you put those two numbers against one another, it could be really easy to be tempted to say okay, this is a tiny drop in the bucket. It's almost inconsequential. But I think it's important to point out that Amazon drives the overwhelming majority of that 92 billion. They have 40% e-commerce share in retail in the United States, and because that's where most of retail media ad spending is concentrated today, Amazon sort of tilts the scales in a way that almost can take away our understanding of the landscape overall. Max, in your latest commerce media report, you did a really great sort of visualization where you took the Amazon out of the picture and maybe even Walmart, and looked at the rest of the retail media.

Rob Rubin (10:36):

16% is the rest.

Sarah Marzano (10:38):

Yes, yes.

Rob Rubin (10:39):

Amazon is 77%. Walmart is like 7%, and then everybody else is the difference.

Sarah Marzano (10:45):

Yeah, but Max, you took the dollar amount and backed out the two retail media giants and did a really great job showcasing that the rest of retail media compared to the non-retail verticals within commerce media are actually quite comparable. And I think what's really interesting if you take into context financial media specifically, is this is not a super crowded playing field. And that's really different than the rest of retail media where you've got this long tail of more than 50 networks here in the United States vying for that ad spend. So I think if you put some of those things into context, paired with the growth rate as financial media builds on a relatively small base, and the things they can do that retailers can't, which we've touched on, those are the reasons that we are endeavoring to really keep track of what's going on in the space and where the opportunity is.

Rob Rubin (11:32):

But it's not for all financial institutions. In other words, this is going to probably be like you see Chase and PayPal, I can see Amex, I can see-

Sarah Marzano (11:42):

MasterCard.

Rob Rubin (11:43):

MasterCard, Visa, B of A, Wells, they might have a trust issue, but Wells. I can see the big ones, maybe even Citi.

Sarah Marzano (11:54):

Yeah, there's plenty of players waiting in the wings and maybe [inaudible 00:11:57].

Rob Rubin (11:56):

But I don't think the little, the regional banks, Huntington Bank, I don't know about that. Right? I don't think the little banks are going to have enough scale.

Max Willens (12:06):

Yeah, I think that that's 100% right. I mean, especially when you're talking about leading with scale of data, all of a sudden if you're a tiny little regional credit union, this starts looking like a fool's errand pretty quick if you're thinking about whether or not to get into it. And that's one way that this is different from the way things might look if you're say a mid-sized specialty retailer, where you might over time be tempted to join some sort of larger network and cede control of it. But that's why you're seeing so much more adoption within retail media, relative to financial media.

Rob Rubin (12:42):

I wonder if the smaller institutions might join together to create a network like-

Max Willens (12:47):

That seems plausible to me.

Rob Rubin (12:48):

... Credit Union Network Media Network.

Sarah Marzano (12:50):

I think that's possible. I think that it's going to hinge on the data portability and the way that they can safely do this, considering they're dealing with data that's highly regulated and pretty sensitive in nature.

Rob Rubin (13:02):

Yeah, I was going to ask this question. Given that they have all this relevant information, why don't they have a bigger share? And I was going to posit that it's the challenges of regulatory challenges, of disclosing certain information, the creepiness factor of being that on target, especially in certain categories maybe.

Sarah Marzano (13:24):

Yeah, I think that's certainly a big part of it and I think that gets us back to what's so interesting about the fact that the players in this space are really diverse, because someone like PayPal has data that's a bit less sensitive than a traditional financial institution. And that may be why we've seen PayPal launch its offsite efforts relatively quickly compared to the launch of their network.

(13:48):

But backing up a second, I think one of the biggest limitations for these players is again, that lack of high purchase intent that their users are going to have. And that's what's really propelled retail media to success, is being able to show an ad to a consumer who's in a shopping mindset in an environment where they're planning on completing that transaction, and financial institutions just don't have that. I think one exception would be the buy now, pay laters, which have built their apps around a shopping sort of interface. And I think we're seeing other players endeavor to fortify their owned and operated properties with more commerce-oriented experiences. But that's an uphill battle when it comes to thinking through any trade-offs to user experience and really, consumer habits, which I think can be quite deeply ingrained.

Rob Rubin (14:41):

I think that we're going to start to get into our final segment. In our final segment, For Argument's Sake, we're going to argue nicely about whether financial media will remain a sliver of commerce media advertising overall, or is the growth trajectory really post 2027 going to continue to outpace other categories? And I think both of you, and you can clarify for us. I think both of you take the position that given some of the challenges that it has and the opportunities, that it's going to grow probably larger than, it's going to continue to grow at a faster pace than commerce media overall after 2027. But it's not probably going to be a primary channel for the big spending advertisers. Did I get that?

Max Willens (15:29):

I think so.

Sarah Marzano (15:29):

I'm happy to take on that side of the debate for this exercise.

Rob Rubin (15:29):

Okay, you don't 100%. I appreciate that.

Max Willens (15:36):

I'll lead out with definitely saying over the, let's call it near to medium term, I think that that's right. And a lot of it is due to stuff that we've mentioned or hinted at already, right? I mean, there is a real kind of inventory scale problem that most of these players are butting up against already. And there's also, as Sarah's mentioned, this sort of data heterogeneity issue, which is going to constrain some players but empower others.

(16:06):

And then also, there's just the simple limiting factor of the data that some of these guys sit on is definitely unique and differentiated. But is it so much more unique and so much more differentiated that to get to that state that you described earlier, means probably taking some money away from retail media or taking some money away from Google or taking some money away from Meta? And I don't think that that's really what I see down the path a little bit, but I'm excited to hear what you guys have to say about it.

Sarah Marzano (16:39):

I will completely agree, and we've been given the task of ganging up on Rob here. So, one of the things that you said really hits home for me, which is just that these players positioning themselves as commerce media networks brings them into the same conversation obviously as retail media networks. And if you're courting the same advertisers, there are a set of expectations that these advertisers have around the performance of these investments that I think is going to be really difficult for the financial players as they stand today to meet. Right? And that is going to create a considerable challenge, particularly when we're talking about a cohort of advertisers that are already reporting being fatigued and overwhelmed by the sheer number of choice that they have within this really crowded landscape and the difficulty and friction that can occur with scaling their spend across even more commerce media networks.

(17:30):

So, I think it's both a strength positioning themselves that way because they do have access to really exciting transaction data that can be quite broad in nature, but it's also something that's going to set themselves up with a really uphill battle in terms of satisfying what advertisers have become accustomed to when they work with retailers.

Rob Rubin (17:49):

So, here's where I fall on it. If I were to think about somebody that has a Chase credit card and they're using Chase, it's their primary card. So Chase is seeing what they're doing, they have quite a bit of information. I feel like they as advertisers start to scale out more, as clean room environments start to grow and usage of clean room environments, I can see Chase being able to build lookalike models that are going to be superior to other predictive models because they have such specific information about spending habits and capabilities.

(18:29):

So for one, I think that some of the financial institutions could actually be a marketplace for quite accurate lookalike models on DSPs potentially, if they have scale. So I feel like that could address some scale issues, not necessarily on site, but certainly with offsite social capabilities, they can probably, Chase with their reach, they might be able to with lookalike models compete in that way.

(19:00):

The other thing is, I think there's going to be innovations that are going to change how people shop. And we were Slacking on this the other day. I think that the credit cards are going to come out with the agents because it's going to be on site. They're going to be able to leverage your behavior and really figure that out.

Sarah Marzano (19:21):

When we do an entire other podcast, and hopefully we do have one in the works around the viability around true autonomous agentic shopping, right? Because there's a ton of really strong opinions amongst folks at EMARKETER on that.

(19:36):

I'm a bit of a skeptic that this is going to take off in a truly autonomous way. I think it is very easy for something to go wrong in a way that erodes trust. And I think financial institutions are really married to maintaining the trust and credibility that they've built up. Right? And we've seen what happens when that goes awry and how difficult it can be to regain that. And so I think we'll need to see a lot of progress from the perspective of something more autonomous like agentic-led shopping for that to really take off. It's certainly a possibility down the line, but I don't personally see it taking off without a fair amount of oversight by the consumer in the near term.

Max Willens (20:17):

Yeah, and I think that there's this in a kind of structural way, a misalignment there, where I feel like we've talked about Chase a disproportionate amount, but maybe it's just because I have one of their cards in my wallet. But they have already sought to position themselves as a shopping partner, like they have a commerce toolbar that you can install in Chrome that will tell you when things are on sale and stuff like that. That's an easy way for them to vacuum up affiliate marketers' budgets. But if they were to build one of these things and say, "Hey Max, we've built this that will help buy things for you," the things that I'm going to want that agent to do are things that fly against what the advertisers want. So maybe I'm looking at a pair of pants on some website and I go, "I like these but I don't really want to buy, pay the full price. I want you to buy these for me, but wait until there's a discount of at least 25%." An advertiser doesn't want to serve-

Rob Rubin (21:11):

No, but I don't think that aligns to consumer behavior in that regard, because I think consumers, they're more immediate. And I'm going to pull your points argument back now. So, say you want 25% and that's you and you're going to wait for it. But if somebody who is interested in that pants and says, "Hey, there's 10% and points towards the vacation I'm trying to save for," right? It's a double thing, they save some money and then on their statements, Chase can show them how much money they've saved them.

Sarah Marzano (21:44):

I think you guys are hitting on the crux of the issue, which is that it is a harder thing to do, but I think it's what advertisers want and what the financial institutions want, is to be able to influence user behavior before they reach the bottom of the funnel. But it takes a much more thoughtful sort of combination of offers and incentives, which can be quite hard to thread the needle on. Right? And I think that's what remains to be seen, is when I look at the offers on some of these players, and it goes back to the true-false question from earlier around whether or not these players can predict my needs, I'm not seeing things that jump out at me. And I'm not picking on Chase specifically here, I'm talking more broadly. I'm not seeing offers or promotions that are incentivizing me to take action I wasn't already taking. Right? And I think that is going to be what these players need to move in the direction of in order to find success.

Max Willens (22:46):

I think though, what's interesting, and this is something that's speculative and I think I would probably bet against it as an outcome, but it is I think extant as a possibility, which is that every generation shops differently on the internet and every generation banks differently. And as generation Alpha, I guess is maybe the next cohort that's going to become card owners, there is no kind of received wisdom or sort of tradition that a new generation of banking consumers adopt. They just, when they get a credit card, they open that app for the first time and they go, huh, what's this? And if over that time, enough progress has been made that a Chase or a PayPal or even a Klarna if you open up for a first time can really effectively communicate that anytime you want there's this bazaar of value and stuff that over time will really speak to you just waiting for you anytime you open this app up. I could see that very-

Rob Rubin (23:46):

Temu.

Max Willens (23:47):

Exactly. I mean, I think so much about, I think that for now, the banks are going to want to project a sort of premium aura, which would preclude them doing stuff like that. But I think that maybe a Neo Bank could start a kind of young consumers oriented thing, and maybe they do partner with a Temu or a Shein and say, "Look at all these cheap schmatas you can get for no money at all, Customer X."

Rob Rubin (24:10):

It seems more likely that they would like a bank when you talk about premium, would more likely try to go after the affluent and mass affluent segment because they can access them and the advertisers will pay a premium for that.

Max Willens (24:23):

100%.

Rob Rubin (24:24):

And they also make a premium on the interchange because those folks get the high end cards and the retailers pay more money when those cards get swiped.

Max Willens (24:33):

Yep.

Sarah Marzano (24:34):

One thing I want to mention and one thing that I do have some optimism around, and Max, you alluded to it earlier, is that PayPal have announced some really interesting initiatives to actually work directly with their merchant partners to secure ad inventory on retailer and merchant websites, helping advertisers target which retailers they're seeing their share potentially decline. And I think that sort of marriage of being able to secure really valuable inventory on websites where we know it works quite well, is a really exciting opportunity and I'm interested to see how that develops from PayPal.

Rob Rubin (25:11):

I have to say that we were very nice to each other and I don't feel like we debated at all.

Max Willens (25:16):

Well, I want to come back for the 75th anniversary episode.

Sarah Marzano (25:19):

Yeah, the 75th one that-

Rob Rubin (25:20):

I'm going to have, can we have a big podcast with all of the-

Sarah Marzano (25:23):

The brawl.

Rob Rubin (25:24):

... all the guests? We'll try to do that. Thank you guys so much.

Sarah Marzano (25:28):

No, this was fun.

Max Willens (25:30):

Yeah, I had a good time. Thanks.

Rob Rubin (25:30):

Yeah, really, thank you. And thank everyone for listening to the Banking and Payments Show. Also, thank you to our studio team that puts these episodes together. Our next episode is on September 16th, so be sure to check it out. Thank you, see you then.

Max Willens (25:45):

Bye.

Rob Rubin (25:45):

Bye.

Sarah Marzano (25:45):

Bye.