Creative Bank Ads

Advertisement can be a rather complicated field to work in, especially in industries such as the banking – with the majority of banks offering more or less the same set of features to its customers. This is where all kinds of unusual features and other gimmicks come in, and if a bank can promote their own unique qualities in the correct fashion – it would be a great way to stand out from its competitors. This article covers multiple different online bank ad variations, with detailed explanation for every banner ad example.

Introduction to bank advertisements

Advertising tends to be a rather competitive field for the majority of markets since the whole point of marketing is to promote a specific product or service. There are also markets such as the banking one that has it even harder than the rest since there is some sort of standard for what a bank can offer to its clients.

A lot of competitors in the field of banking offer roughly the same set of services, which makes marketing and creativity one of the best ways to get your bank to be recognized more. Online advertising is a great place to start promoting yourself, especially with how online ads offer quite a lot in terms of flexibility for your promotional materials.

However, creativity can also be a problem on its own, if you do not have a specific idea for promotion in mind. In cases like these, it often helps to scroll through different existing promotion materials within the same field to try and draw inspiration from one of them. It can be something that plays on contrasting colors a lot, or something that uses creative imagery to draw attention to itself.

This is exactly why this article was made – to provide inspiration for online advertisements in the banking field by offering a variety of different creative bank ads examples – while also explaining specific design choices or ideas behind them. 

Creative bank ads examples

These creative bank ads are going to be separated into multiple groups or categories in accordance with their size, as well as other parameters – this should make the entire article more readable. There are three main categories of bank ads used in this article – “Square”, “Story-shaped” and “Other examples”.

Square bank ads (1080×1080 pixels)

Our first category starts with a relatively straightforward advertisement from a bank about a credit card. The credit card in question is placed on the banner, and the branding itself is simple yet effective – a blue-colored background with a friendly-looking person as a part of said background that should represent the way customers are treated in this particular bank. This blue background creates a great contrast for a white-colored font that the ad title is written with, covering both the title card as a whole as well as the biggest advantage of the promoted card – a rather large amount of cash-back.

A credit score is an important factor for almost any bank account holder, for a variety of reasons – but it is not always that you can have an easy way to check the aforementioned credit score. This particular ad puts a lot of emphasis on this specific issue, offering the ability to find out your credit store in a rather unusual font that attracts attention. The background of this ad is also unusual, with a plain-looking background combined with an assortment of Indian coins placed close to one another, creating a grid of sorts that attracts attention to itself.

The last two examples in this category follow the same design structure, even though they are technically created for different social media websites. This similarity in design is the main reason why we are going to combine the commentary about these banners into a single paragraph so that we can avoid repeating ourselves.

Both of these banners are using relatively simple color schemes, they both are almost monochrome – one has a contrast of a black credit card and a white background, while the other has the credit card made in a color that is similar to the background color. The overall design is very minimalistic, including nothing but a title and a company logo (as well as the background with the credit card, of course) – even though the first banner has a CTA button included. There are situations in which such simplicity can be just as attractive as creating a colorful and striking bank ad, so it is unwise to avoid this approach to banner design.

Story-shaped bank ads (1080×1920 pixels)

The second group of bank ads uses a rectangular shape with a specific combination of dimensions that are used for Stories on either Instagram or Facebook. This allows for an image that is taller than it is wide, with quite a lot of free space to use. This specific bank ad is a good example of that, with mostly green background that has a person in a white shirt holding a large coin. This creates a rather interesting visual for a bank advertisement, combined with the usual title and CTA button combo.

Innovation is what this particular ad promises in the field of banking. It uses a real-life image of a person holding a credit card of a specific brand – but this credit card also has a cartoonish effect to it, making it stand out more in the image. The ad’s title is also done with a good portion of mystery, using a rather unconventional font that still manages to stand out with this kind of background while also being really thin on its own. The only part of this banner ad that is relatively normal is a CTA button – which is why it also stands out a bit.

Ambiguity can be a powerful tool in the right hands, and this specific bank ad is a good example of that. This ad centers around a rather ambiguous title that offers some sort of service to allow users to “get more from their money”. The ambiguity in this statement is a large part of what makes it so powerful, combined with a bright color palette that uses a white background with a few light-blue elements and a beige-colored credit card as a centerpiece of the image – and the card is also the same color as the background “blob” under the title card text, which makes it more noticeable.

Investing in the stock market is a very specific branch of banking services that has its own share of advantages and shortcomings. This particular banner puts a lot of emphasis on one of the most obvious benefits of investing – monthly recurring revenue from buying/selling stocks. It offers just enough information to make a potential client interested and click the ad in question – with a rather normal-looking grey background combined with a smartphone that has one of the investing apps open already and showing very specific parts of its interface.

The last banner ad on this group is relatively simple, with a plain- single-tone yellow background, a portable card reader, and a white credit card in the frame. The title card is simple enough to generate curiosity, but not long enough to make people uninterested – and the combination of a card and a card reader stands out quite a lot on the yellow background, attracting attention to itself with relative ease. All in all, this ad is a good example on how even some of the simple ideas can be very effective.

Other examples of creative bank advertisements

Our third category of creative bank ads includes a number of completely different images that are extremely different from one another – starting with this 1920×1005 bank ad, which is a perfect shape for it to be an event banner on Facebook. This kind of ad would work great as promotional material for some sort of event or a discount for a specific service – right now it is used for general promotion purposes. It has a credit card within a credit card holder, a white background, and a combination of red title font with a blue CTA button for contrast, creating a rather unusual combination of elements for an online ad.

Another example of a banner that did not fit into any other category is this group cover banner that is 1640 pixels wide and 856 pixels tall. This banner also puts a lot of faith into the power of contrast, using an orange-colored background with a blue credit card in the middle of it. The title of this banner also tries its own powers in attracting attention of a potential viewer, promising an entire “new era of mobile banking” – a statement both ambitious and ambiguous enough to interest someone into clicking the said banner.

There are also banners here that are not tailored for a specific social media website’s shapes and dimensions, like this 300×600 bank ad – often referred to as a Half-page banner. This one is a somewhat different banner type since it is promoting online banking as a service, and not a specific credit card variation. This is why there is a different title in place, and the CTA button is titled “Log in” instead of “Learn more” – because the page it leads to is not a promotional one, but rather the log in page of the service in question.

The very last position on this list is a combination of two banners performed in a similar fashion – shaped like a regular Facebook banner 820 pixels wide and 312 pixels tall. Both of these banners are performed in a minimalistic fashion with a plain light-green/light-purple background, very simple imagery as the centerpiece of each banner, and a combination of a title card, a brand icon and an additional line of text to specify the purpose of each bank ad.

Conclusion

There is no limit to how many different variations of creative banner ads can be created depending on the target audience, target website or platform, and many other factors. Variation can be found in elements such as fonts, backgrounds, color combinations, and so on. 

Element placement and the combination can differ depending on the shape of the banner ad, or its purpose – resulting in a massive amount of potentially unique banner forms. It is relatively normal for a person to not know or think about all of the potential variations for a specific banner type – which is why we hope that this list of different bank ads could serve you as an inspiration in one way or another since there are many variations in this list of banners.