AdGooroo Finding: Health Insurance is Highly Competitive in Paid Search Advertising

by Client Services

In the latest report from AdGooroo, the firm explored the Health Insurance category and Paid Search advertising, specifically U.S. Google AdWords activity for desktop and tablet on 6,003 health insurance-related keywords in the first half of the year, from January to June 2014. The consistent theme throughout this rich report is that the Health Insurance category in paid search advertising is extremely competitive. AdGooroo found that nearly 28,000 advertisers spent $103 million sponsoring 6,003 health insurance-related keywords during the first half of 2014, at an average Cost Per Click of $3.16. Within the Top 20 keywords (measured by spend), there was an average of 171 advertisers bidding on each keyword

Another interesting takeaway is that the Top 20 advertisers by spend comprised a variety of subcategories, including health insurance providers, a health insurance agency, government-sponsored exchange sites, an online health insurance seller. But the site that topped them all was a lead aggregator, which collects contact information from consumers seeking health insurance quotes and sells that data to various insurance agencies and providers. The site, IndividualHealthQuotes.com, spent more than $4.4 million during the first half of the year on the keywords examined. Its subdomain, UHC.IndividualHealthQuotes.com, which advertised “United Health Care Plans” during the period, added an additional $1.26 million, bringing the two sites total to $5.66 million during this period.

The Top 20 Keywords by Spend include some general terms such as ‘healthcare insurance’, specific terms such as ‘medicare’ and branded terms such as ‘blue cross blue shield’. Further, four of the Top 20 Keywords were related to the Affordable Care Act while 5 were related to Medicare.

You can read AdGooroo's summary here or download the full report here.