Insurance RPM
Insurance carries some of the highest per-click rates in advertising, because a policy renews annually and a carrier will pay a great deal for a customer who stays for a decade. The same economics fund the competition: the top results are usually carriers, comparison sites and lead brokers with real budgets, not independent publishers.
Measured RPM: not enough data yet
Monetific publishes the median RPM for a niche once at least 5 monitored sites contribute to it. Insurance currently has none.
Connect a insurance siteWhen this niche earns
| Period | Direction | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Open enrolment | Peak | Health insurance advertising concentrates into a short annual window, and rates in adjacent content rise sharply with it. |
| January | Peak | Policy renewals and new-year switching drive both search intent and advertiser budgets at once. |
| Storm and wildfire season | Peak | Home and property coverage searches spike regionally after major weather events, and carriers bid into them. |
| Mid-year | Steady | Auto and life insurance intent is comparatively flat outside renewal cycles. |
The economics behind the rate
Insurance sits at or near the top of every CPC ranking for a structural reason
worth understanding, because it explains both why the rates are high and why
they are hard to capture.
An insurance customer is not a sale. They are a subscription that renews
annually, often for years, frequently across more than one policy. A carrier
weighing what to pay for a new customer is weighing a decade of premiums against
one acquisition cost — which makes bids that look absurd for a single click
entirely rational.
Publisher RPM is a share of that calculation.
Which is also why the competition is what it is
The same economics fund everyone else. Search for any broad insurance term and
the results are carriers, national comparison platforms and lead brokers, all of
whom can spend more on content than an independent publisher can, because they
capture the whole customer rather than an ad impression.
Independents who do well in insurance almost never win on breadth. They win on
specificity that a national brand has no incentive to cover:
- A particular situation — coverage after a lapse, insuring a converted vehicle,
a claim history that changes everything - A particular region, where local rules or local carriers dominate
- A particular exclusion that everyone encounters and nobody explains properly
These have less traffic and far less competition, and the advertiser bidding on
them is the same advertiser.
Geography and intent decide your actual rate
Two things separate a site earning insurance rates from a site merely writing
about insurance.
Geography. Carriers are licensed per jurisdiction and bid accordingly. A
reader in a market where the advertiser cannot write a policy is worth very
little to them, whatever the page is about.
Intent. "How does deductible work" and "cheap auto insurance quotes" are
both insurance content and are not remotely the same product to an advertiser.
The premium lives near the quote request.
A note on compliance
Insurance is regulated, and the line between explaining how coverage works and
advising someone what to buy is a real one with licensing implications in many
jurisdictions. It is worth staying on the explanatory side deliberately rather
than by accident — and it also happens to be the side where the content is more
durable.
What Monetific will publish here
The measured median RPM across monitored insurance sites, with its sample size,
once there are enough connected sites for the figure to describe the niche
rather than a handful of publishers. Until then this page says so rather than
borrowing a number from elsewhere.
Frequently asked
- Why does insurance have such high CPCs?
- Because the customer recurs. A policy renews every year, so a carrier is not bidding for one sale but for a relationship that may run a decade. That lifetime value is what funds bids that would be irrational for a one-off purchase, and publisher RPM is a share of it.
- Can an independent publisher realistically compete here?
- On broad terms like "car insurance", rarely — those results belong to carriers and comparison platforms with acquisition budgets. Where independents do win is specificity: a particular situation, a particular state or region, a particular exclusion nobody else has explained clearly.
- Does insurance content have compliance risk?
- Yes. Insurance is regulated per jurisdiction, and content that reads as advice about coverage or eligibility can cross into territory that requires licensing. Explaining how a product works is different from telling a reader what to buy, and the distinction is worth respecting.
- Why is my insurance site earning far below the published rates?
- Usually traffic geography or intent. Carriers bid where they are licensed to write policies, so readers outside those markets attract thin auctions. And informational content about how insurance works sits far from the quote request that advertisers are actually paying for.
Know your own number
A niche median is a reference point, not a target. Import your earnings export and Monetific shows your RPM by day against a trailing median, so you find out which day it changed rather than which month.
See the RPM analyzer