'The kind of TV that we're doing is working': JPMorgan Chase is moving ad dollars back to TV despite declining viewership

Kristin Lemkau

JPMorgan Chase CMO Kristin Lemkau manages a whopping $5 billion marketing budget.
In an interview with Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget, Lemkau said that JPMorgan Chase had retreated from an all-in digital marketing strategy.
She said that the company was moving some money back to TV, even though fewer people are watching it.

Fewer people are watching TV than ever before. Yet JPMorgan Chase is pouring more of its whopping $5 billion ad budget into TV.

That is because the company is currently in the midst of a flight back to quality, JPMorgan Chase's chief marketing officer Kristin Lemkau told Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget in a recent interview.

"Digital can be the Wild West and it's not for the faint of heart, and the metrics are funky and there is fraud and viewability and brand safety, all of these other nightmarish things that we know," Lemkau said. "So we've retreated a little bit from an all-in digital strategy and we have gone back to TV."

Specifically, the financial services company has started to invest more in live sports and events on TV, she said, as they still generate a fair amount of value.

"All of our models still show that the kind of TV that we're doing is working," she said. "And I think because of what's happened in digital ... most marketers have realized how their dollars can go awry."

With ads increasingly ending up next to unsavory videos or being viewed by bots instead of humans, many advertisers have started taking charge themselves by bringing advertising in-house and pausing their digital investments.

JPMorgan Chase has led the charge on this front, first by slashing the number of sites it advertises on from 400,000 down to 10,000 and then by developing its own algorithm on YouTube to ensure that its ads didn't end up next to dicey videos on the platform.

In fact, Lemkau said that the brand was never big on YouTube in the first place.

"We weren't big on YouTube, mostly because I just hate pre-roll as an ad unit," she said. "Pre-roll just defies common sense."

Lemkau explained that she wasn't a fan of the ads plastered to the beginning of videos because she believes that marketers don't have the right to interrupt a consumer's experience, particularly in a digital environment where they are a click away from infinite choices.

She stressed the need for what she dubbed "permission-based content," where publishers, brands and agencies collaborate to create stories that don't disrupt the experience.

Like other brands including Verizon and Pernod Ricard, JPMorgan Chase has also brought certain aspects of it marketing in-house, particularly pertaining to data and programmatic.

To watch the full interview, click here.

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NOW WATCH: THE KRISTIN LEMKAU INTERVIEW: JPMorgan Chase's CMO explains how she deals with disruption on two fronts at once, why she's moving some ad dollars back to TV, and why it matters what your credit card feels like