MoneySupermarket ramps up ad spend by £20m
MoneySupermarket increased its advertising spend by £20m in first half of 2022, up to £83m from £63m the previous year.
Judi Dench fronts MoneySupermarket’s most successful campaign to date
The company doubled down in the first half of the year as people turned to its services to reduce household outgoings in-part thanks to a new Judi Dench-fronted campaign.
Its online spend increased by £8m to £42m, while TV and radio spend was up by £6m to £19m.
News of ongoing investment will be welcomed by the ad industry, which has been rocked by a report from the IPA that suggested it’s in for four years of slashed spending.
The brand hailed the new direction its marketing took with the launch of the MoneySuperSeven campaign fronted by actress Dench earlier this year.
Created by New Commercial Arts, it ushered in a new logo, brand identity and “squad of money-saving specialists” to highlight its promise to slash a collective £1bn from the cost of insurance, mortgages and loans to help combat the cost-of-living crisis.
The group stated that it was “resonating well” with customers, who were using its dedicated hub on the cost-of-living crisis, which hosts guides, news stories and tips.
“We have seen an encouraging increase in our share of branded search traffic, and independent research shows the campaign is resonating better with consumers than any other campaign we have done to date,” said chief executive Peter Duffy.
The comparison site had 10.8 million active users in the six months to June (up from 10.2 million during the same period in 2021) and saved them an estimated £0.9bn (up from £0.8bn). Its net promoter score measured by YouGov was also up following the campaign, it said.
Customer acquisition was helped by its migration to Google’s Search Ads 360.
“We continue to deploy more sophisticated features,” it said. “We are using machine learning (ML) to target a wider range of search terms with less manual intervention. This has resulted in a 41% increase in our PPC share of clicks in the credit card channel. We plan to roll out this capability elsewhere in the group.”
However, amid the ongoing warnings on energy price hikes, it has seen an increase in people using the site for comparison but ultimately not switching suppliers. As such its revenue per active user fell £1.14p to £15.86.
Overall, it saw a 19% increase in revenues to £193.2m for the last six months of the financial year.