Super Bowl Ad Preview: GEICO Tops Insurance Brands for NFL Ad Spend Leading Up to the Big Game

B&C has partnered with TV advertising attention analytics company iSpot.tv and its Super Bowl Ad Center to give you in-depth context and analysis during the run-up to game day. On Tuesday we took a look at the wireless brands that spent the most on TV advertising during NFL games leading up to Super Bowl LI. Wednesday, we’re focusing on insurance companies, which as a category had a year-over-year TV ad spending increase during NFL games/programming of nearly 18%.

While 14 insurance brands ran commercials during the 2016-17 NFL season, just three brands — GEICO (37.19%), State Farm (19.9%) and Nationwide Insurance (19.62%) — accounted for over 75% of the industry’s total spend. GEICO ran 29 spots 713 times across the season, spending for an estimated $100.4 million to rack up 1.7 billion TV ad impressions.

Behind GEICO, Nationwide was second in impressions with nearly 1.2 billion on the NFL season, and State Farm was No. 3 at over 1 billion. USAA and Progressive rounded out the top five, with 613 million and 271 million audience impressions, respectively.

As for the insurance category’s year-over-year increase in spend, the lion’s share is attributable to GEICO and State Farm. GEICO ran nearly three times as many spots during NFL programming in 2016 (713) as they did in 2015 (240), which amounted to an estimated $17 million additional outlay. And State Farm also upped its NFL ad game with an estimated $8 million spend increase.

Follow along with all the Super Bowl ad excitement in iSpot.tv’s Super Bowl Ad Center.

Check back Thursday for another Super Bowl Ad Preview post, with more insight on the NFL’s biggest brand backers leading up to the big game.

John Cassillo is an analyst and contributor with TV[R]EV.