Anyone getting real results with fintech display ads?

[John Snow]

I’ve been wondering about something for a while, and I’m hoping others here have played around with it more than I have. Has anyone actually seen consistent results with fintech display ads? I keep seeing people talk about how they “work great,” but honestly, I wasn’t sure if that was real or just another one of those marketing buzz things that sounds better on paper than in real life.

My first thought was that display ads just blend into the background. I mean, most of us scroll past ads without even noticing them, right? That’s what made me kind of doubtful at first. With finance-related stuff, people are already cautious. They’re not going to click just because a shiny banner says something interesting. So I figured maybe fintech display ads were mostly for brand visibility and not actually for getting real leads or signups.

But then I had this phase where I was testing different ad formats for a small finance project I was helping a friend with. Nothing fancy, just trying to see what channels even gave any signal at all. Social ads were okay but kind of expensive. Search ads were unpredictable unless you really monitored them nonstop. Display ads, though, were the ones I least expected to see anything from.

At first, my results honestly looked like what I expected: barely any clicks, and the few that came in didn’t seem very meaningful. I almost wrote them off completely. But just out of curiosity, I started tweaking a few basic things. I didn’t do anything advanced—mostly reworking the messaging to be simpler, changing the visuals to feel more “human,” and choosing placements related to finance rather than random general sites.

That’s when I noticed something interesting. Even though clicks stayed modest, the quality of the people who did click was way better than before. It wasn’t like getting hundreds of random clicks. It felt more like a handful of people who actually cared enough to explore what was being offered. And for finance businesses, especially anything fintech-ish, that kind of user is way more valuable than someone clicking by accident.

One of the bigger surprises for me was realizing that fintech display ads seem to work best when the message doesn’t try too hard. The more I simplified the copy—like just stating what the tool does or who it helps—the better the engagement looked. I think people can sense when something is trying too hard to grab attention, and in finance that usually backfires. A calm, clear message actually stands out more.

Another thing I didn’t expect: placements matter a lot more than the banner itself. When ads showed up on finance blogs, comparison sites, investment-related pages, or even forums, the results were noticeably better. When they appeared on completely unrelated websites, it was pretty much useless traffic. I learned that the context people are in affects how they look at the ad way more than I initially thought.

I also stumbled across this article while trying to understand the topic better, and it actually helped me look at things differently: Fintech Display Ads That Deliver Real Results for Finance Businesses
It breaks down the idea in a pretty straightforward way and made me rethink how display ads can be used instead of how they’re usually talked about.

Another small observation: banner sizes matter too. I don’t know if this is universal, but for me, wider horizontal formats performed better than tall skinny ones. Maybe people find them easier to read. And responsive ads—where Google adjusts the shape to fit placements—actually surprised me because they blended well without looking overly designed.

After all this trial and error, I’m not saying fintech display ads are some magic solution. They’re definitely not the kind of thing where you just switch them on and suddenly your funnel fills up. But I will say they seem to work better than I expected when the right combo of message, placement, and intention is there.

If someone is thinking of using them strictly for quick conversions, they might be disappointed. But if the goal is to reach the right people in the right mindset and build awareness that leads to steady engagement later, then they’re not a bad tool at all. Kind of slow and steady, but in finance that can actually be a good thing.

I’m still experimenting, so I’m curious if others here noticed similar patterns or if I just got a lucky streak with certain placements. Would love to hear if anyone else has found small tweaks or tricks that made their fintech display ads perform better.