Blog post
Helping insurance advertisers deliver engaging experiences
Insurance organizations are looking to redefine their business by improving operations, enabling revenue growth, and engaging customers. In this increasingly complex landscape with the possibility of disruption and disintermediation, connecting directly to customers and allowing them to make decisions faster is vital. With Microsoft Advertising, we’re helping insurance advertisers deliver new experiences that make these connections richer and more powerful than ever.
Following our announcements in the Travel, Automotive, and Credit Card space, we’re now excited to begin this journey with insurance advertisers. To start, we’re empowering our health insurance advertisers with new engaging experiences known as Health insurance ads.
The health insurance market is gearing up for the high season of annual enrollment this year. We recently released trends that revealed the key drivers of search growth in 2020, and we’re now delighted to share this new product unique to Microsoft Advertising that’s piloting in the U.S. As of this week, Health insurance ads are now eligible to serve for advertisers who are targeting U.S. customers with Medicare queries for this year.
What are Health insurance ads and what do they look like?
As of today, Health insurance ads trigger for non-brand queries such as generic Medicare and plan-type queries. Promoting specific plans is currently not supported.
Similar to our recently released financial services Credit card ads, Health insurance ads are intent-triggered rich placements that provide real-time information to consumers and inspire action, all with no keywords required. With a spot on the right rail of the Bing search engine results page (SERP) running alongside mainline text ads, you can showcase your healthcare plans more prominently than ever.
Health insurance ads are dynamically generated based on the data you specify in your feed file, such as your plan type, the organization category, federal registration status, and URLs. The more details you provide in the feed file, the more information we can include in your ads.
These Health insurance ads run on the right rail of the Bing SERP and run alongside mainline text ad placements.
Why Health insurance ads?
- Customized ads: Submit and schedule your feed, and based on the attributes you provide, we’ll create relevant, personalized ads.
- Improved return on ad spend: See more volume, increased click-through rates (CTR), and lower cost-per-click (CPC) rates.
- Time-saving automation: With no keywords required, the ads are created by feed files that use Microsoft AI automation and are fully equipped for bulk upload.
What kind of success are advertisers seeing with Health insurance ads?
Our initial set of advertisers in the health insurance market shows:
- Efficient conversions: One customer in the health insurance pilot has seen a 4x increase in return on ad spend (ROAS).
- Lower costs: In early pilots of Health insurance ads, one advertiser has seen their cost per acquisition (CPA) drop to less than $20.
These are tremendous numbers for health insurance advertisers so far and we’re pleased to offer this great opportunity for cost-effective sales.
Awesome! How do I get started?
To sign up for the beta for Health insurance ads, you first need to reach out to your Microsoft Advertising rep or contact our support team to be enabled.
Once you’re in the beta, you’ll need to provide a feed. A comprehensive feed with rich attributes such as image URLs and contextual keywords is critical for your success with Health insurance ads. We’d also recommend feed scheduling to keep your feed data fresh and to ensure your campaigns remain effective.
What else should I know?
Here are a few other things to keep in mind as you start running your Health insurance ads:
The auction is independent from text ads
- You can participate in the Health insurance ads auction with the campaign associated to your feed file and also participate in the text ad auction with your regular campaigns.
- This means that you can serve in both the text ad block and the health insurance ads block simultaneously.
- The health insurance ads auction is CPC-based.
Bids and budgets
- We recommend that you start with $500–$1000 per day to ensure consistent results for learning and optimization.
- Set your starting bid within the range of $25–$50. Monitor performance and average position and adjust up or down accordingly.
Targeting
- In campaign settings, make sure you set your location targeting to the states for which you're licensed.
- We recommend that you measure, and monitor baseline performance first, and then fine-tune the return on investment based on audiences.
If you’re interested in participating in the beta, reach out to your Microsoft Advertising rep to learn more, or contact our support team to be enabled.
Help us improve Microsoft Advertising
Your comments and feedback are integral to our ongoing efforts to shape and improve our product. For any questions or feedback, please reach out to your Microsoft Advertising account manager, or send us an email at advertising-feedback@microsoft.com. You can also interact with us on Twitter or via Microsoft Advertising Feature Suggestions.
