American Express Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. boosted their advertising expenditures earlier this year, a sign overall ad spending has begun to rise.
In January and February, Amex's ad spending was up 17.9% from a year earlier, while Chase's rose by 48.7%, according to Kantar Media Intelligence.
"What's interesting to me is the product mix," said Jon Swallen, Kantar Media's senior vice president of research. He noted that for Amex the mix of ad spend between personal and business cards was almost reversed from the previous year
In the first two months of 2010, Amex spent 24% of its ad spending on business cards and about 60% on personal cards.
This year it spent 66% on business cards and only 25% on personal cards in January and February.
Amex has been focusing on its small-business ad spending, particularly for the Open program, which supports small businesses, Swallen said.
"It's a very optimistic campaign and tied to 'booming' businesses," he said. "One aspect is the connection with the baby boomers who own the businesses, and another is the concept of business growth." Amex declined to comment for this story.
For JPMorgan Chase, the switch in emphasis was the opposite of Amex's, as its Ink small-business card ad campaign did not get nearly the level of advertising support as it did two years ago, garnering only $4 million out of $46 million the issuer spent on credit card ads, Swallen said.
Instead, most of the issuer's ad spending during the first two months of the year was for personal cards.
"Amex and Chase far and away are advertising the most diverse portfolio of credit card products," Swallen said. "Everybody else is doing advertising around one card."
Amex and Chase are casting a much broader targeted net, Swallen said. "That strategy requires more money, and [those two issuers] are spending more to do it," he said.
