Health insurance advertising trends important to track

The health insurance field is a competitive one, with many different companies trying to connect with consumers who, these days, are becoming more aware of the benefits of such coverage. As such, it will often be wise for companies in this sector to do more to understand the ways in which their competitors are advertising their offerings, which might provide insight into what they will have to do to stand out from the crowd.

From January to June of this year, some 28,000 health insurers spent more than $103 million on Google AdWords advertising for computers and tablets alone, with more than 6,000 health insurance-related keywords having been paid for, according to a report from the web tracking firm AdGooroo. For the first half of the year, the average cost per click faced by such a company was $3.16, and 3.86 percent of users clicked through to the pages being advertised.

Of course, those are just overall numbers, and don't focus on either the most popular keywords or the ways the largest participants in this corner of the health insurance advertising market worked, the report said. When whittling down the numbers, it seems that there was an average of 171 companies bidding on each of the 20 most successful keywords in terms of spending. Those companies tended to include both sites that would help consumers choose their coverage across a number of options, and individual health insurers trying to better connect to people directly.

What were the keywords?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the total amount spent on this kind of advertising varied considerably by keyword, the report said. For instance, “health insurance” got by far the most money spent on it – at more than $8.2 million – but the market was cluttered. A total of 358 advertisers got in on that keyword alone, with a cost per click of $7.83, but a low click through rate of 2.91 percent. Meanwhile, the term “affordable care act” came in sixth among spending (more than $2.1 million) from only 163 advertisers, but had a click through rate of 3.58 percent, and cost per click of just $1.90.

This kind of data may be vital for health insurers going forward, especially ahead of this next round of open enrollment. The ability to better connect with interested consumers may go a long way toward getting them to sign up for coverage as soon as possible.