Where’s the Digital Advertising to Get Young People Into Obamacare?
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When the Affordable Care Act was signed into law in March 2010, the goal was to provide individuals who did not have health insurance with subsidies and facilitate signups through online exchanges. The exchanges opened for business in October 2013 and the deadline for signing up is March 31. You know what I haven’t seen much of since then? Digital ads for health insurance.
Health-insurance ad spending is focused on TV, to the tune of an estimated $500 million in 2014. TV ad spending dwarfs digital in most categories, but the health-care industry has been particularly slow in adopting digital advertising. According to eMarketer, healthcare and pharma has the lowest total projected online ad spend of all major U.S. industries through 2017, and the second-lowest annual growth rate.
We do see health-care providers expanding digital efforts. Cigna, for instance, has been running display and search alongside TV and print since October. Wellpoint plans on investing over $100 million this year in TV, social media and print to reach younger viewers. But it is worth pausing to consider whether the federal health-care rollout might have been different had insurers treated digital as their primary advertising medium rather than a line item in a broader campaign. Mobile and video, for instance, have yet to generate significant investment.
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