Convincing young adults to start investing is no small task. For many people aged 18-34, the stock market feels complex and risky. Yet this group represents one of the largest untapped opportunities for long-term growth in financial services.

When Bolero, Belgium’s leading online brokerage and part of the KBC Group, wanted to close this gap by making investing more accessible, it turned to  Trustmedia, the award-winning sales house of Mediafin, publisher of De Tijd and L’Echo, Belgium’s leading business and finance brands.

Through this partnership, Bolero activated Trust Insights, Trustmedia’s proprietary framework that turns first-party data into measurable campaign performance.

What is Trust Insights?

Trust Insights is Trustmedia’s three-pillar framework for digital advertising. Instead of using data only for targeting, it applies data throughout the campaign lifecycle — from strategy and execution to measurement and learning.

The framework consists of:

• Audience insights, to understand who the audience is and what drives engagement.

• Campaign excellence, to translate insights into optimised execution.

• Effectiveness insights, to measure performance and inform continuous improvement.

Together, these pillars ensure campaigns are data-informed, adaptive, and transparent.

Audience insights

The starting point was understanding who Bolero should reach and how to speak to them. Trustmedia used privacy-safe, first-party data within its walled garden ecosystem of trusted business and finance media.

This data goes beyond demographics, revealing reading behaviour, content preferences, and engagement patterns. Shared transparently with the advertiser, without black-box models or look-alike audiences, it highlighted high-potential segments often overlooked in financial marketing, notably retail savers and women investors.

These insights informed targeting choices as well as messaging, tone, and sequencing.

Campaign excellence

With a clear audience strategy in place, Trustmedia moved into execution. Insights were activated through a marketing-funnel structure designed to build relevance and intent over time.

The campaign began with an awareness phase, using contextual placements in news and politics content rather than narrow investor targeting. This approach broadened reach and introduced Bolero to engaged readers who might not actively seek investment content.

As performance data came in, the campaign was refined. In the consideration phase, targeting focused on retail savers and women investors to increase relevance and engagement. In the activation phase, retargeting concentrated on users who had already interacted with the campaign, aligning messaging with demonstrated interest.

Continuous monitoring and optimisation ensured efficiency throughout.

Effectiveness insights

The final pillar ensured that performance measurement was not an afterthought. Trustmedia delivered detailed reporting both during and after the campaign, analysing key indicators such as click-through rates and conversion performance at each stage of the funnel.

These insights were used actively, not just retrospectively. By comparing results across phases and audience segments, Trustmedia created a feedback loop that strengthened the campaign as it progressed and produced clear, actionable learnings for future initiatives.

Results exceed expectations

The impact of this structured, insight-led approach was clear:

• Awareness: Contextual placements delivered a 87% higher CTR than untargeted run-of-site display, proving the value of relevance at scale.

• Consideration: Targeting retail savers and women investors drove a further 75% uplift in CTR, demonstrating the effectiveness of precise audience segmentation.

• Activation: Retargeting users who had already engaged added another 28% CTR uplift, while conversion rates increased from 1% to 6%.

The quality of results improved as the campaign progressed. Leads generated during the consideration and activation phases were 600% more effective than those from the awareness phase, highlighting the importance of sequential, data-driven engagement.

By treating data as a strategic asset rather than a standalone targeting tool, Trust Insights delivered measurable performance while respecting privacy and relevance, setting a strong benchmark for future digital campaigns.

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