HDFC Life Makes it to the List of Finalists at the Global Search Awards 2023

The leading Indian life insurance company gets shortlisted for its IPL campaign in the category, Best Use of Search – Finance (PPC): Large.

HDFC Life is a renowned company in India’s life insurance sector with the primary objective of ensuring the financial well-being of individuals. Millions of Indians trust HDFC Life for their insurance needs, and the company has proved to be reliable with its exceptional claim settlement ratio of 98.66%. The brand was looking to drive consideration during India’s favorite sporting season, the Indian Premier League (IPL).

The IPL season in India is not just a tournament.

It’s a festival for cricket enthusiasts in India. With players from around the world and engaging commentary and shows, the IPL attracts millions of Indians who love the game. This presents an unmissable opportunity for brands to capture the attention of their customers and drive the adoption of their products or services, making it a golden time to create business impact.

However, this leads to an increase in the demand for search advertising during this season, and therefore, the cost of search advertising increases as well. This means that brands need to be even more prudent and make intelligent decisions to achieve their objectives while being both effective and cost-efficient.

In a time like this, HDFC Life saw an opportunity.

The brand realized that this was the moment to leverage search differently to achieve its objectives. The brand chose to utilize Microsoft Advertising’s solutions with InMobi and run a brand campaign targeting IPL viewers. Microsoft Advertising remodelled the brand’s search campaign with the combined power of two major features: In-market Audiences and Automated Bidding.

Here is how the features drove results:

1. In-market Audiences helped the brand identify and reach users with a high intent to purchase.
2. Automated bidding optimized bids to boost the campaign’s efficiency by maximizing clicks and improving cost per click (CPC).

The brand ensured that the spotlight was on it.

By leveraging Multimedia Ads, Microsoft Advertising ensured that HDFC Life’s brand communication stood out on the search engine results page (SERP), even amid fierce competition from other brands that were trying to ride on the IPL to reach their audiences.

Microsoft Advertising’s owned and operated channels played a significant role in enabling a high conversion rate for HDFC Life during the IPL season. The campaign also benefited from extended reach and visibility through optimization across Microsoft Advertising’s syndicate network.

The campaign’s efficiency grew in leaps and bounds.

By tapping into Microsoft Advertising’s Responsive Search Ads (RSA), HDFC Life further enhanced the efficiency of the campaign by allowing the platform’s automated optimization to match the campaign’s headline to the advertising copy in the best way possible, thereby reaching its target audience with heightened effectiveness.

The campaign on Microsoft Advertising achieved about 850,000 impressions and witnessed an impressive click-through rate (CTR) that was around 1.1x higher than the benchmark for CTRs during IPL campaigns in India. Additionally, the brand also observed a heartening 30% reduction in cost per click (CPC) in spite of the highly competitive IPL advertising season.

Here’s what the team had to say about the campaign: “A great partnership is always advantageous! Despite the high competition throughout the IPL season, the Microsoft Advertising platform provided excellent results for HDFC Life by leveraging and strategically combining two powerful capabilities—Automated Bidding and In-market Audiences, thereby amplifying the visibility and securing the spotlight on the SERP.”

Team InMobi was elated to see this campaign among the finalists at the Global Search Awards: “The HDFC Life campaign is one we’re very proud of, considering the sheer vastness of the moment and the great impact that we were able to create at such a time with our partners at Microsoft Advertising. We’re delighted that the Global Search Awards saw the potential of this campaign, and we are grateful for the acknowledgment and recognition of our work.”