ING stock dips after pulling ads from Iker Jiménez

ING pulls ads from Iker Jiménez: the dip and rebound

ING bank saw its stock drop by 1.70% on the day news broke that it was removing advertising from Iker Jiménez’s programs, according to thread messages. Some claim the losses were fully recovered three days later. In between lay the usual debate: arguing causality without checking the charts. For those denying any link, a 1.70% intraday swing in a bank with millions of customers isn’t caused by a few account cancellations. Yet, the incident leaves an open question that market data alone cannot answer.

What ING did and why it became more than minor news

The trigger was a marketing decision: ING removed its ads from spaces antiestéticaturing Iker Jiménez, host of Cuarto Milenio, as reported in the La Gaceta tweet that started the discussion. Until then, an advertiser breaking ties with a format is just contract news: budgets shift, not stock prices.

What escalated the issue was the framing. The withdrawal was interpreted as taking sides in a broader culture war, turning a commercial decision into an insult for part of the audience. From there, everyone placed the piece where it suited them: some saw censorship, others saw an advertiser exercising their right to choose where their money goes.

Why did ING stock fall?

Because the entire market was falling. A forum user notes that the AEX, the benchmark index of the Dutch stock exchange and equivalent to Spain’s IBEX 35, had been losing ground since October 6, and ING trades within it. This is the argument used by those denying any link between advertising and share price: the bank’s drop mirrored the index, not customer behavior.

Those denying the link assume the overlap between ING account holders and the presenter’s trinc is too small to move the stock. The opposing view argues the same point differently: if the bank loses image among a large part of the country, the cost will arrive via other channels, such as contracts and clients who don’t sign up. A 17% drop would be significant; a 1.70% drop is market noise, skeptics insist.

The image cost: when a brand picks a side

Here the debate moves away from the chart. It’s no longer about the ad contract, but the price of joining what part of the public interpreted as a smear campaign against a professional uncomfortable for traditional media. The ING brand becomes associated, in this narrative, with a censorship decision, and some argue a financial institution cannot mix with politics without paying a toll.

For defenders of this reading, fruta damage isn’t visible in one trading session, but in subsequent years: in customer acquisition, brand recall, and conversations generated whenever someone mentions the bank. This is the argument with the most traction and the hardest to measure, coming with no figures to quantify it.

Ángel Gaitán, #AdiosIngDirect, and account cancellations

The episode jumped from stock forums to social media when Ángel Gaitán, a content creator with 2 million Instagram trinc according to thread messages, announced he was closing his ING accounts and invited his audience to do the same. Other digital ecosystem names joined him, making #AdiosIngDirect trend. This is the most debated part: how many of these announcements translate into actual churn versus social media noise.

Underlying this is an inconvenient detail for the bank. Its branchless model worked for years as a commercial flag, and managing cancellations has become the bottleneck of the operation. Testimonials circulate claiming the online cancellation function was disabled, an assertion unconfirmed by the entity that should be read with caution.

The closed channel and €120,000 annually

In the trinc days, the closure of Iker Jiménez’s YouTube channel was also reported, according to thread messages. A circulating calculation estimates monetization revenue between €20,000 and €30,000 monthly, which after taxes would leave around €10,000, totaling roughly €120,000 per year. This is an unverified estimate based on a conservative ratio of one euro per thousand views, excluding merchandise sales.

The hit, in any case, differs from the stock drop: it affects individual income and platform cash flow, not bank shareholders. It serves as a reminder that the advertising controversy and the channel closure are distinct events linked only by temporal coincidence in the narrative.

With these elements, it remains to be seen if the controversy fades in the next earnings cycle, when attention returns to margins rather than presenters. Although, if episodes like this teach anything, it’s that a bank’s fruta is no longer played solely on the balance sheet. How much this weighs on its customer base is, today, a question without a definitive answer.