In contemporary society, advertising has become ubiquitous across various domains, including the financial industry, where it assumes a significant role. It fosters consumer awareness regarding the latest products being made available to them. Additionally, it establishes a connection between the advertising organization and the customer. Visual metaphor (VM) influences consumers’ response through their cognitive and emotional processing, though how audiences like banking advertisements ‘with visual metaphor’ has rarely been observed. The current study investigates audience ad-liking for ‘with’ and ‘without visual metaphor’ advertisements. It further examines gender differences in ad-liking for ‘with’ and ‘without visual metaphor’ advertisements in Indian banking print advertisements. In this study, a total of six Indian banking print advertisements—three ‘with visual metaphor’ (WVM) and three ‘without visual metaphor’ (WOVM) were shown to one hundred and two (102) participants (51 males and 51 females) and their responses toward those were taken. The result demonstrated that audiences are more likely to respond favorably to banking advertisements that use visual metaphors. In addition, the study reveals that gender has a moderate effect on advertisements containing ‘visual metaphors’ and those ‘without visual metaphors.’ The study has vast implications for the future research of Indian print advertisements.