Outcreating Paid Media Performance in Financial Services: 11% Lower CPA With In-House Pods

About the Client

The client is the largest U.S. bank by assets and a global financial services leader, serving consumers, small businesses, corporates, governments, and institutional clients across retail banking, investment banking and markets, and wealth and asset management.

As a scaled, multi-line institution with a broad product portfolio, it runs high-volume acquisition and brand programs across regions, channels, and customer segments. That operating reality puts pressure on marketing teams to move fast, stay compliant, and prove performance with consistent measurement and governance. 

Market Trends in U.S. Banking and Financial Services Marketing

Large banks are entering 2026 with vigorous competitive intensity and rising expectations for marketing efficiency. Higher rates and improving capital market conditions have supported revenue strength, but banks are also navigating regulatory uncertainty, credit normalization, and cost pressure from ongoing investment in technology and AI. In parallel, competition from large peers and fintechs keeps customer acquisition expensive and highly contested.

These dynamics are pushing marketing leaders to bring more capability in-house, tighten control over spending and execution, and standardize performance measurement across regions and channels. Banks also face growing scrutiny on privacy, consent, and brand safety, which raises the bar for governance and workflow discipline in paid media operations. In this environment, in-house operating models that improve speed, accountability, and repeatable execution are becoming a key differentiator. 

Need for Change

Paid media operations were slowing down under manual, non-standardized workflows and inconsistent inputs across brands. Campaign launches were delayed and error-prone, response times were sluggish, and performance teams lacked reliable data to optimize with confidence.

The client needed to bring paid media capability in-house and build a Pod of Delivery operating model to standardize execution, improve personalization, and reduce wasted spend in financial services marketing. The goal was to own outcomes and Outcreate workflow possibilities with faster cycles, stronger control, and measurable impact across programmatic, search engine marketing (SEM), and search engine optimization (SEO).

Key Challenges

• Paid media delays and errors slowed launches: Slow, error-prone campaign execution impacted speed to market and performance.
• Sluggish response times limited optimization: Teams could not act quickly enough on changes, hurting campaign performance.
• Inconsistent data reduced trust in decisions: Data reliability issues limited confidence in campaign performance optimization and reporting.
• Media spend inefficiencies increased waste: Process gaps and execution issues led to wasted marketing budget.
• Personalization barriers restricted customer journeys: Limited ability to tailor experiences reduced customer journey effectiveness.
• Manual work consumed more than half the effort: Over 50% of the effort went into manual, non-standardized processes.
• Non-standard inputs drove rework across brands: Multiple formats and double-touch processing increased effort and errors. 

LTM’s Solution

As the client’s Business Creativity Partner, LTM helped stand up an in-house paid media capability to replace the incumbent agency model and improve execution consistency across regions.

The transformation focused on standardizing delivery, automating repeatable steps across the campaign lifecycle, and establishing a pod-based operating model with clear roles, governance, and performance accountability across programmatic, SEM, and SEO.

1. Unified delivery standards: Standardized media plans, campaign trackers, and creative instructions to remove variation and reduce errors.
2. Lifecycle automation: Automated campaign setup, pacing, reporting, invoice validation, and budget reconciliation to cut cycle time and reduce manual effort.
3. Regional pods of delivery: Set up three pods of delivery for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), the Americas (AMER), and Asia-Pacific (APAC), supported by cross-trained programmatic traffickers and dedicated SEM and SEO teams.
4. Rules-based decision engine: Enabled real-time rules-based automation and machine learning driven customer insights to improve execution decisions and responsiveness.
5. Personalization by design: Built personalization into offers, content, and communications to support more relevant customer journeys.
6. Integrated orchestration layer: Connected AdTech delivery, marketing automation, and data platforms to create a single customer view across execution.
7. Co-owned in-house partnership model: Built a competitive in-house team working closely with the client’s marketing organization to improve control, speed, and alignment with business objectives, supported by continuous learning and cross-functional collaboration.

Business Benefits

By bringing human insights and intelligent systems together, LTM helped the client improve paid media performance while building a stronger operating foundation for in-house execution.

• Improved paid media efficiency and reduced waste: Delivered 20% cost savings by eliminating redundancies and lowering manual effort across paid media operations.
• Accelerated campaign delivery and in-flight optimization: Enabled 30% faster campaign rollouts through streamlined workflows, automation, and faster real-time adjustments.
• Increased reach and engagement at scale: Improved audience impact with a 20% lift in reach and engagement across campaigns.
• Improved demand response and conversion performance: Delivered 14% more form fills and a 21% increase in conversion rate through more effective execution and tighter optimization.
• Lowered acquisition costs: Reduced cost per acquisition by 11%, improving ROI across paid media programs.
• Stronger control and continuous improvement: Built ownership-driven teams with granular control, supported by internal capability development and ongoing innovation.

Conclusion

By applying LTM’s paid media transformation playbook, the client addressed operational bottlenecks and delivered measurable performance outcomes.

The engagement also strengthened the client’s in-house marketing capability, improving control, speed, and effectiveness across regions.

“Our evolution into a strategic advisor for brands has been years in the making. With consulting and ad agency veterans on the team, we creatively partner with businesses to build future-ready marketing capabilities powered by AI and industry-leading platforms.”

Brandon Gerena, Head of Interactive Consulting, LTM