Advertising Expenditure Allocation and Marketing Return on Investment Measurement in Financial Services Brand Campaigns

Abstract

Objective. This article develops an integrative decision framework for advertising budget allocation in financial services marketing, addressing three linked problems: fragmented measurement, weak treatment of uncertainty, and the separation of commercial decisions from risk governance. Approach. A structured narrative synthesis draws on finance, analytics, technology, operations, governance, and sector-specific literature, comparing findings across more than sixty named studies rather than treating the literature as an undifferentiated pool. The framework organizes evidence across incrementality, media attribution, brand carryover, channel interaction, budget optimization, and measurement governance, defines incremental risk adjusted marketing return as the focal decision criterion, and proposes a sequence of data definition, baseline construction, causal or comparative estimation, risk adjustment, scenario testing, governance review, and post implementation learning. The study draws on no confidential company data and offers no causal claims about named employers. Findings. The analysis shows that isolated efficiency or revenue measures are insufficient because they omit implementation costs, tail losses, customer effects, and timing. The article contributes a reusable architecture linking economic evaluation with accountable execution, together with a set of falsifiable propositions, measurement fields, validation tests, and reporting practices suitable for empirical testing. The central implication is that decision quality improves when value, risk, behavior, and control effectiveness are appraised inside one auditable model.