“We Can Create Infinite Content at Close to Zero Cost, but Can We Turn It into Trust?” Insights from FMLS:25

At FMLS 2025 industry panel on “AI and Marketing in Fintech”, senior marketers from Investing Live, Innovate Finance, ADSS and X delivered a blunt message: artificial intelligence is rewriting the rules of acquisition in finance – and many firms are not ready.

The End of the Google Era?

For more than two decades, digital marketing in finance has been built around Google – organic search at the top of the funnel and paid search further down. That model is now under pressure.

“For 20-plus years, the world of marketing was used to the very successful Google model,” said Itai Levitan, Head of Strategy at Investing Live. “Google was the 900lb gorilla. And we can start seeing a possibility that in the future that will be almost completely gone. ”

He noted that AI gateways like Gemini or ChatGPT changed the journey and many publishers had already seen organic traffic fall 30–50% as AI overlays intercept queries.

Jo Benton, the former ADSS executive, argued that the shift is exposing broader weaknesses: “Performance masked weak brands for years. AI is just exposing it faster.”

Platforms are witnessing the same behavioural pivot. Federico Paderni, Managing Director for Growth Markets in Europe at X, said users now discover information differently from the search-led habits of the past decade.

“AI surfaces answers before they reach the source — discovery has moved up the stack,” he noted. For content sites and even brokers, this raises a blunt strategic question: if users can get what they need from an AI interface, “what is the reason for them to come to me?”

Infinite Content, Finite Trust

If discovery is changing, so is the content itself. AI has made it trivial to generate copy at scale – and that, several speakers warned, is creating a new kind of risk.

“We’ve now got the ability to create almost infinite content at close to zero cost,” said Tony Cross, Director at Monk Communications. “If we’re not careful about this, there’s going to be so much rubbish out there, people aren’t going to be able to find the truth in the noise.”

Levitan cited another cautionary tale: a site called AI Invest, which he said had grown rapidly on Google thanks to fully AI-generated content. “They dominated so much placement there, it was crazy,” he said. “And then Google did the spam update, and now their traffic is zero.”

Platforms, too, are struggling to maintain signal over noise. Federico Paderni, Managing Director for Growth Markets in Europe at X, noted that Grok now scans more than 100 million posts and videos per day to distinguish relevance from clutter.

Governance, Education and Uneven AI Adoption

The panel’s enthusiasm for AI was tempered by repeated calls for governance and internal education.

“There are some really strong commercial use cases,” Benton said, pointing to scaling production, automating optimisation and testing campaigns against synthetic audiences. “But what [AI] can’t replace and shouldn’t replace is that strategic thinking and judgement. That framework and governance around it is really, really important.”

She argued that organisations have a responsibility to educate their workforces – not only to dispel fears about redundancy but also to ensure consistent adoption. In some firms, product teams have been early adopters, “10x-ing” their output, while marketing Marketing Marketing is defined as the business process of identifying, anticipating and satisfying customers' needs and wants.This is a crucial element of any operation or brokerage in the financial services space. Well-funded marketing campaigns are instrumental to the survival and longevity of these companies in an increasingly competitive industry.Within the forex space, marketers perform a wide range of functions to help procure, secure, or retain clients.In particular, newer forex brokers also have t Marketing is defined as the business process of identifying, anticipating and satisfying customers' needs and wants.This is a crucial element of any operation or brokerage in the financial services space. Well-funded marketing campaigns are instrumental to the survival and longevity of these companies in an increasingly competitive industry.Within the forex space, marketers perform a wide range of functions to help procure, secure, or retain clients.In particular, newer forex brokers also have t Read this Term, sales and operations lag behind.

Gross warned that organisations often adopt AI for the wrong reasons. “Someone senior hears ‘we can do more for less’ and pushes for automation without thinking about the quality implications,” he said. “And that’s how bad content slips out the door.”

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Beyond Clicks: Reputation, Partnerships and Payback

Asked what marketers should measure “beyond clicks”, Roberto Napolitano, CMO at Innovate Finance, argued that traditional performance metrics are no longer sufficient.

“For us, KPIs are, first, reputation,” he said. “We know reputation is very hard to build but very easy to kill. It’s not just how many clicks you get, how many impressions you get, but what the sentiment in the market is about your organisation or your product.”

The second pillar, he added, is strategic partnerships. “Fintechs are partnering with other fintechs; they’re partnering with banks,” he said. “We need to be better at measuring the impact and the return on investment on partnerships.”

Other speakers agreed that narrow metrics no longer capture true performance. Benton noted that rigid CPA targets can limit growth. “Some of the most important channels in the funnel are the hardest to measure,” she said. “If you only reward last-click conversion, you underinvest in the activity that creates demand in the first place.”

Platforms are experiencing the same shift. Paderni said advertisers on X are moving away from pure CPA and towards longer-horizon metrics: “More partners are now looking at lifetime value and brand lift. They want to know how activity influences the whole journey, not just the final click.”

Measuring those effects remains difficult, particularly given the long time horizons and reputational risks if a partner runs into trouble. But Napolitano believes AI will eventually help firms quantify partnership value more precisely.

Affiliates, Ambassadors and Broken Attribution

AI is also complicating longstanding acquisition models, not least in affiliates.

“With so many touchpoints today, if I’m an affiliate, it’s not fair that I do all the marketing and you want to pay me CPA,” Levitan argued. “They might go to the AI. They might convert on a different device. There’s no more tracking… The good affiliates Affiliates Affiliates serve as an essential component of a broker’s client acquisition tactics and marketing. One of the most important functions of affiliate marketers is the sending of leads to the broker, which are directly opening an account or visiting the broker’s website. There are several ways in which brokers compensate affiliates based on the number and type of clients they refer to the company and whether or not or how much they end up depositing.Understanding CPA or Cost Per Acquisition The bro Affiliates serve as an essential component of a broker’s client acquisition tactics and marketing. One of the most important functions of affiliate marketers is the sending of leads to the broker, which are directly opening an account or visiting the broker’s website. There are several ways in which brokers compensate affiliates based on the number and type of clients they refer to the company and whether or not or how much they end up depositing.Understanding CPA or Cost Per Acquisition The bro Read this Term will work with the brands that pay them upfront or pay them for the real work.”

He predicted more publishers and comparison sites would favour hybrid or fixed-fee arrangements, while brands that cling to last-click, CPA-only models will “create a void” that better-funded competitors can fill.

Paderni, by contrast, highlighted X’s “affiliate programmes” as a way to turn customers into brand ambassadors rather than simple lead sources. Companies can assign badges to clients or employees, making their posts visibly associated with the brand. He cited eToro’s use of badges for “popular investors” as an example of “branding the content of their own clients to increase visibility and message”.

The broader point, echoed by several speakers, was that marketers should think less about buying clicks and more about mobilising their customer base as advocates – with or without financial incentives.

Looking Ahead: New Marketing Environment

For marketers, the immediate challenge is balancing AI’s advantages with its risks: discovery bottlenecks, content dilution and trust erosion.

AI may accelerate workflows and reshape acquisition paths, but it cannot replace the human judgement that underpins financial decision-making. The panel returned repeatedly to that tension.

“We’ve lost sight that we’re actually selling to human beings,” Benton reflected — a reminder that trust, clarity and authenticity still determine whether a customer engages or walks away. Firms that rebuild around those principles will remain visible in an AI-driven ecosystem; those that don’t may simply disappear from it.