Progressive Insurance Grew Traffic by Nearly 25% in Q1, Closely Followed by State Farm

Share of traffic study for March and the first quarter of 2023 shows traffic shifting away from GEICO

Of the insurers advertising relentlessly to urge consumers to call or click for a quote, Progressive and State Farm have been doing the best in web traffic, while digital engagement for GEICO has been falling. It’s enough to make a gecko green with envy.

Key takeaways

• In the first quarter, Progressive and State Farm showed the biggest traffic gains. Traffic to progressive.com was up 24.8% for Q1 and 24.9% in March, while traffic to statefarm.com was up 22.2% for Q1 and 21.3% in March.
• Traffic to geico.com was down 8.9% for the first quarter and 14.5% for the month of March. GEICO’s share of traffic within this set of competitors dropped 3.3 points year-over-year in March.
• Nationwide and Farmers also posted significant gains for the quarter, with nationwide.com up 11.1% and farmers.com up 11.3%.

This post is part of a series of share of traffic reports, which aim to track online engagement with a set of competitors as a leading indicator of market momentum. We tracked companies offering auto, home, and property insurance but did not include health insurance companies in this report.

Some of the changes we’re seeing could be the result of altered ad budgets. While you might think you’ve been seeing the gecko just as much as in past years, GEICO cut back its insurance spend by 38% in 2022, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

GEICO spent $1.28 billion on advertising, an $800 million decrease from 2021, as the Berkshire Hathaway unit suffered from heavy claims losses, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Progressive became the biggest ad advertiser of 2022, spending $1.73 billion – actually a decrease from $1.87 billion in 2021. State Farm and its affiliates spent $1.01 billion, down from $1.07 billion in 2021.

Progressive and State Farm tower over the rest in growth

As summarized above, Progressive and State Farm showed strong growth in March. GEICO’s traffic dropped by 14.5% and Chubb was down 15%, year-over-year.

The pattern for the whole first quarter looks similar, although the traffic drop for GEICO is a bit less, down 8.9% year-over-year, and Chubb’s traffic was up slightly, 0.3%.

Traffic up from February to March

Traffic for all players was up month over month, with Travelers actually showing the biggest growth over that time period, up 23.3%.

Progressive gaining share of traffic, while Geico loses its share

Progressive’s share of traffic, within this set of competitors, was up 2.7 points, while GEICO’s was down 3.3 points.

USAA, Progressive, and State Farm get the most traffic

USAA, which caters to military members and their extended families, attracts the most web traffic of the companies in this report, with 22.8 million visits in March, although Progressive isn’t far behind at 22.7 million.

Public companies mentioned in this report include Progressive (NYSE: PRG), Allstate (NYSE: ALL), Liberty Mutual (NASDAQ: LYBTA), Progressive Financial Group (NASDAQ: PFG), Farmers (NASDAQ: FARM), and Travelers (NYSE: TRV). Geico is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, and State Farm is a mutual company owned by its policyholders.

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Report By: David F. Carr, Senior Insights Manager

Methodology

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Photo by Tierra Mallorca on Unsplash

by David F. Carr

David covers social media, digital advertising, and generative AI. With a background in web trends since the 1990s, he’s also the author of "Social Collaboration for Dummies".