New Study Highlights Impact of Online Media on Financial Services Sector
Internet Ads have profoundly affected the way consumers choose and interact with financial services
from Doubleclick, Inc.

Few industries are more perfectly suited to online transactions than financial services. With no shipping costs or lost packages, products like investment services, online banking and credit cards have lent themselves well to the global, always-on benefits of the online space. According to estimates from the Electronic Payments Association, U.S. Internet users made close to 700 million online bank payments in 2003 for a total of more than $200 billion.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Doubleclick is a vendor of AICPA’s Insider e-newsletters

Recently, DoubleClick undertook an analysis of The Impact of Online Media On the Financial Services Sector, based on data from DoubleClick (Ad Serving and Email Trend Reports, Consumer Email Study IV, and Touchpoints II) and Nielsen//Netratings (NetView and AdRelevance.) The results provide a snapshot of the latest consumer expectations and competitive marketing practices in the realm of financial services including consumer banking, credit cards, mortgages, insurance and investments.

Some of the key findings of the study were:

• Internet Ads have profoundly affected the way consumers choose and interact with financial services. DoubleClick's 2004 Touchpoints II-a survey of 2,000 consumers about recent purchases-asked those who opened credit card or banking accounts in the last six months how they first learned about the service they ultimately selected. 11% selected "Internet ad", the third-most popular choice after only "postal mail" and "word-of-mouth" out of 12 possible options. In the case of those who had purchased mortgages and investment products, 18% chose "Internet ad," the number-one choice.
  
• Consumers use online financial services at twice the rate new users go online. By June of 2004, 80 million users were using the Internet for some type of financial service, including banking, managing and paying credit cards, investments, and securing loans. That is more than half of the total of Americans who are online (149 million).
  
• The growth in online financial services mirrors the growth in high-speed bandwidth. High-speed Internet connections have spurred an increase in visits to financial service sites. By June of 2004, users were averaging 11 visits a month to some type of financial site, an increase of 21% in 18 months.
  
• Internet users under 40 conduct financial research and transactions online more often than older counterparts. Research from Forrester Research and the Online Publishers Association (OPA) both reached the conclusion that younger Internet users consume more financial services online than older demographics. Forrester determined that of consumers who applied for credit products in 2003, 48% of "Generation Y'ers" (age 18-28) and 42% of "Generation X'ers" (age 29-39), had conducted research online first, compared to only 30% of "Baby Boomers" (40-57) and 16% of Seniors (58+).