Programmatic media-buying platform Rocket Fuel has released a detailed new study into brand awareness for U.S. insurers. Insurance has always been one of the most fiercely contested online verticals, and the study provides cutting-edge insights on consumer behavior, marketing strategy and budgets, and data-driven conversion rate optimizations – in many cases, these can apply to many other markets and verticals.

One of the most revealing insights of the study was in confirming just how valuable cross-channel ad spending is to insurance providers, with display ad spend being nine times more effective at driving top-of-mind awareness than TV.

Here’s a rundown of the top takeaways.

Top Takeaways for Building Top-of-Mind Awareness

1. Increase Cross-Channel Advertising Efforts

Increasing cross-channel ad spending to drive top-of-mind awareness is particularly crucial for insurance brands, with 1 in 10 of all surveyed respondents saying they would ‘definitely’ or ‘probably’ switch auto-insurer within the next six months. Particularly in auto-insurance where traditional brands - like State Farm and Allstate - have an advantage with their established customer base amongst older adults, who in turn recommend their insurers to their children, winning top-of-mind awareness is an integral part of insurer purchase funnels.

As the graph above illustrates, direct insurers like Geico and Progressive have advertised heavily to break this cycle. Combined with the self-direct preferences of younger consumers, having a strong cross-channel presence can enable direct insurers to capture more market share over time.

2. Increase Digital Spend, Particularly Display

For every $1 million an auto-insurance provider spends in digital or display advertising, that brand is likely to see a lift in top-of-mind awareness of 0.18 percent, the study revealed. Comparatively, the same spend in TV yields a lift in top-of-mind awareness of 0.02 percent, due to likely over-saturation of the channel.

Auto and life insurers can generate additional efficiency from their marketing initiatives by shifting budget from overcrowded TV channels into digital, particularly digital display.

3. Add A Human Face To Display Advertising To Maximize Conversions

A gem of insight revealed by the report is that display ads featuring people (and human faces) resulted in average conversion rates 177 percent higher than those that did not. Animated ads and ads with blue or red backgrounds have higher click-through rates, but images of people had the most beneficial affect on conversion rates.

4. Implement Closed Loop Measurement For Marketing Initiatives

The report also highlights the importance of closed loop measurement. According to Rocketfuel “auto insurance advertisers should also consider closed-loop measurement and optimization solutions for their marketing initiatives to obtain a complete view of the impact of digital marketing spend on application rates for insurance policies.”

You can download the full report from Rocketfuel.

This article first appeared on the Linkdex blog.