In December 2012 the EU Gender Directive came into effect preventing gender being used as a factor by insurance providers to rate risk. However male drivers remain 18% more likely to have an accident than female drivers. The challenge therefore was to increase profitability by reducing the proportion of male car insurance quotes that carry a higher risk, while compromising neither the volume nor the efficiency of new customer acquisition.

Delivering step changes in performance for mature paid search accounts is often a challenge but one that we must continually meet. The opportunity to do so is only ever a result of embracing change, insight and data. The intersection of these three elements was required in order to radically improve the profitability and efficiency of new car insurance customer acquisition for Aviva.

The release of Google Adwords Demographics For Search Ads (DFSA) gave new functionality to modify bids and ad copy based on demography. Having already demonstrated the value to Aviva in using DFSA to tailor ad copy we were reasonably assured that there would be adequate targetable volume. The first task remained to identify the proportion of impressions that we would be able to affect.

While 58% of impressions could not be categorised by gender, 25% could be identified as male, a sufficiently significant proportion to pursue. As anticipated the data backed the hypothesis that car insurance policies sold to male drivers were not only less profitable for Aviva but also relatively inefficient to acquire. Results: - +14% uplift in click to quote % - Quote to sale conversion rate increased by 20% - Cost per quote reduced by 13% - Cost per sale reduced by 31% - Average written premium increased by 5% - 1.52 x increase in ROI

The strategy was to exclude target-able males from being exposed to ads on Google search when searching 'cheap car insurance' terms in order to reduce overall cost per quote and sale, and increase the profitability of policies underwritten.