One of the more interesting trends in leading U.S. banks’ second-quarter financials is the strong growth in marketing spend. Most of the leading banks significantly scaled back their marketing spend following the financial crisis towards the end of 2008. Since then, most have grown this expenditure, and the latest data shows that this trend is continuing.
The following table summarizes year-on-year changes in marketing spend in recent quarters (quarter on quarter comparisons are typically not very revealing, due to the seasonal nature of marketing spend):
