What good is an ad if no one sees it?

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. has made great strides in recent years in improving the quality and relevance of the information found in its BrokerCheck database. So we are heartened by the industry-funded watchdog's decision to launch a five-week, multimillion-dollar advertising campaign aimed at encouraging investors to research their brokers before hiring them. The ads will run online, in print and on television. The move comes as the Securities and Exchange Commission considers whether to green-light a rule proposal by Finra that would require brokerages to include a link to BrokerCheck on their websites and brokers' profile pages — a proposal that this publication supports.

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But $3.5 million, the amount of the ad campaign, is a drop in the bucket compared to what major companies spend on promoting their products or brands, and it is unlikely to significantly raise consumer awareness of Finra's database. We urge Finra to dig deep and find the resources necessary to extend the campaign both in duration and scale so that more investors learn of BrokerCheck's existence. It is estimated that only about 10% of investors use the database to make decisions about investment professionals. What good is a new-and-improved BrokerCheck if 90% of investors aren't aware the useful resource is there? The answer is “not much.”