By: Ben Jeger, VP of EMEA, Moloco
With more users relying on mobile tools for banking and investing than ever, the opportunity to grow in new markets has never been greater. In fact, Lloyd’s Bank reports that just 8% of its customers still use a brick-and-mortar branch as the only way to manage their money.
But in a highly regulated, trust-driven industry, user acquisition comes with unique challenges. So how can finservs drive results without compromising brand safety or customer trust?
Achieving safe, measurable user acquisition
Trade Republic is a leading European mobile brokerage that offers commission-free trading in stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies. Driven by its mission to democratise finance and empower everyone to invest, the company set out to reinvent its acquisition strategy to attract new users.
It aimed to reach audiences in fresh, untapped channels, but only in safe, brand-appropriate contexts. In a regulated environment where customer trust is key, it was essential that ads never ran alongside graphic or harmful content, preserving both user confidence and brand integrity.
Equally important was the ability to measure and demonstrate the effectiveness of this new strategy. In a numbers-driven industry like finance, justifying marketing spend is critical. Stakeholders – whether internal teams, leadership, or investors – need clear evidence that a new strategy is delivering measurable results and worth the investment compared to traditional channels.
With these goals in mind, Trade Republic partnered with Moloco, a leading advertising technology company, to transform its digital advertising approach and unlock scalable growth.
Fresh thinking to drive user growth
To stand out in a crowded market, new ways of thinking and bolder strategies are required. Traditionally, businesses have often relied on the platforms of major industry players like Meta and Google to deliver and manage ad campaigns. And according to recent research from Moloco, a staggering 88% of marketing budgets are still concentrated on just those two giants. Yet, user behaviour has changed. Every day, more than two billion people are active across over three million independent apps – spaces outside the confines of Meta and Google.
The dominance of these major platforms also comes with limitations, especially when it comes to transparency. Campaign insights are heavily restricted, meaning businesses are left wondering what is working – and what isn’t.
Consequently, as people diversify where they spend their time online, forward-thinking brands are starting to explore new, high-impact channels. Trade Republic’s partnership with Moloco provided the opportunity to reach a huge cache of new users from independent apps across news sites, gaming apps, lifestyle platforms, and more.
Moloco’s AI analyses billions of parameters to unlock key insights about user behaviour for precise, automated ad targeting – allowing Trade Republic not only to diversify where it engaged potential new users, but how. Real-time ad optimisation ensures ads reach the right users at the right moment, boosting performance and reducing wasted spend.
Demonstrating genuine marketing ROI
Moving beyond the proprietary platforms of Google and Meta was only part of the shift. Trade Republic also wanted to prove incrementality – the number of net-new users acquired who would not have engaged otherwise.
Traditional metrics like Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) are useful but can provide an incomplete picture of ad performance. CPA often fails to reveal whether paid campaigns are driving genuine growth or simply capturing users already primed to convert through pre-existing channels.
As Trade Republic expanded across Europe, it launched multiple geo-targeted campaigns. To quantify their true impact, Moloco’s growth and data science teams implemented a rigorous test-and-learn strategy built around controlled incrementality testing.
Instead of relying on a single snapshot, they ran five back-to-back tests over six months in Germany, France, and Spain, with Germany as the largest market. This cadence allowed them to account for creative changes, shifting market conditions, and other external factors that could skew results, giving a clear, reliable measure of conversion lift. All five tests showed incremental lift in installs, and four out of five demonstrated statistically significant incremental lift on core KPIs.
For fintechs, where every marketing pound must deliver measurable value, incrementality offers a much more precise lens for the value of their spend.
Fresh opportunities for brands that look beyond the obvious
Outside the big names of Google, Meta, and Apple, there’s a vast world of mobile apps built by independent companies – together reaching as many people as TikTok and Instagram combined.
By exploring this wider digital landscape, Trade Republic found new ways to connect with potential customers and unlock a new wave of customers. As user behaviour continues to evolve at lightning speed, the brands that succeed will be those that adapt and leverage new technologies to unlock value where others aren’t looking.
