Says Gustav Goosen, CEO of The SpaceStation and Head of Research for IAB South Africa: "Online platforms have become more and more trusted as credible sources of information. Once that trust is entrenched through sustained, informed content, there is an engaged consumer market that makes the online space a very powerful tool for financial institutions wishing to speak to their markets."
The survey was conducted through IAB publisher websites in September and October 2014 with 7,200 completed surveys. The survey aimed to answer questions about future investment intent, value of investments and savings, sources of investment advice as well as level of investing confidence of online consumers.
Internet users have a higher average household income than any other media type, and as such they have higher propensity to utilise investment and saving products than consumers of other media types. A significant 87% of respondents either had or were interested in starting an investments or savings product. This really highlights the appropriateness of premium publisher display advertising campaigns for current and potential investors.
The IAB publisher base also showed a significantly higher usage for retirement and investment products than AMPS general internet users. This specifically highlights the higher income profile of IAB publisher network respondents.
Says Natasha Fourie, Strategist at The SpaceStation, "Although many of the respondents are existing users of investment or savings products there is scope for upselling and cross selling of financial products. This coupled with a significant interest in investment information indicates a valuable consumer who understands the importance of investment but wants additional information from brands."
While the online results should be high as they are sourced from multiple surveys issued by Effective Measure across IAB's publisher network - the high percentage of users choosing investment advice from online platforms is significant. Over a third of the respondents indicated that they source financial information from online sources. Combine this statement with the conclusions above and it becomes evident that credible, detailed investment content online is vital.
These findings are an echo of the results of a Fin24 study conducted by The SpaceStation early last year. That survey also showed that online sources of financial information are highly trusted and used as a primary source of financial guidance. Fin24 is South Africa's largest financial website and by far the biggest in the IAB's stable with over 1.4 million monthly Unique Browsers across web and mobile (March 2015 Effective Measure stats).
For further insights, please contact The SpaceStation team to arrange a presentation of the full research data: http://www.thespacestation.co.za/contact-us/.
