Brand case study · Digital banking · Philippines
Tonik went quiet on Google Ads just as MariBank got loud
SOMIN analysed about 20 months of Google ads: 126 from Tonik Bank and 516 from 7 competitors. Tonik went silent for about 5 months and dropped its 0.514-scoring micro-loan angle.
The challenge
Tonik's Google Ads peaked at a 54% share, then stopped
Tonik Bank's rivals for budget-conscious Filipinos are Maya, MariBank, Salmon, GoTyme Bank, Union Digital Bank, OFBank and UNO Digital Bank. Its ads ramped through 2025, peaking in Dec 2025 to Feb 2026.
The approach
Trends, whitespace and products across 10 Google Ads windows
- Used Google ads only, from SOMIN's ads library.
- Tracked format, voice share, tensions and audiences, rating each claim's confidence.
- Rated 9 tensions as contested, blocked or partially defensible.
- Mapped products and angles by predicted clickability.
- Flagged data gaps such as single-brand artefacts and overlapping samples.
Key findings
No open whitespace, one loan and a dropped top angle
No open whitespace
All 9 tensions are already occupied. Banking trust, accessibility and fee messaging is 25.6% of competitor ads and 0% of Tonik's: blocked, not open.
One loan carries the business
Credit Builder Loan has 109 ads, 86.5% of Tonik's corpus; Savings and Time Deposit has 21, on one generic angle.
The best angle was dropped
A ₱20K medical needs micro-loan scored a corpus-high 0.514 predicted clickability, but ran in 2 ads and stopped in Feb 2025.
What SOMIN delivered
88 banners, 8 display concepts and 5 strategic pillars
- A 10-window trend read with an emerging travel signal
- A whitespace verdict map of 9 tensions
- A product map with predicted clickability per angle
- 5 pillars, each traced to a finding
- Banners in 11 standard sizes, each at 9 words or fewer
“Differentiate within contested lanes — don't hunt for empty ones”
From the SOMIN briefing
The outcome
Tonik should restart Google Ads and re-test its top-scoring angle
Confirm why the ads stopped: MariBank now runs 70% of the latest window. Then scale the “any goal” Credit Builder Loan angle, re-test the medical micro-loan at volume and fix Home Renovation creative before leaving a lane no competitor holds.
FAQ
Tonik Bank case study FAQ
About SOMIN
SOMIN is a Singapore-based AI marketing-intelligence platform. It turns real-time competitor and audience data into pre-scored propositions, briefs and creative concepts for brands, agencies and creator programmes across 11+ markets.
Built by seasoned marketers and an AI professor: the methods behind this study are peer-reviewed at AAAI, ACM Multimedia, SIGIR, WSDM and in ACM TOIS. See the research and talks.
What data did the Tonik briefing use?
Google Ads Transparency data on Search, Display Network and YouTube, via SOMIN's ads library, from 23 December 2024 to August 2026.
What is predicted clickability?
SOMIN's above-average probability score from creative analysis: a pre-launch prediction, as the corpus has no spend or click-through data.
Why is there no confirmed whitespace?
With only two cohorts, Tonik and its competitors, SOMIN caps verdicts at contested, blocked or partially defensible, and brand absence is never whitespace.
Get the full Tonik Bank case study
Every page of the brand briefing: the data, the whitespace, the personas and the creative. Free, straight after a short form.