The four largest personal lines property and casualty insurers in the US continued to slash their advertising spend in 2023, partly to offset the effects of loss-cost inflation.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s GEICO Corp. led the pack with a year-over-year decrease of nearly 35% in total advertising expense during 2023, the largest decline among the Big Four auto insurers, according to an S&P Global Market Intelligence analysis.

GEICO spent more than a billion dollars on advertising annually for at least the past 10 years. In 2023, its advertising expenditure fell below $1 billion to $838.2 million, about $443 million less than in 2022.

In its recent Form 10-K filing, the company stated that the significant reduction of its advertising expense for the past two years contributed to the reduction of GEICO's policies in force. The insurer experienced a year-over-year decrease of 8.9% and 9.8% within its private auto line of business in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

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Allstate slashes ad spend by more than 30%

The Allstate Corp. saw the second-largest year-over-year decline in total advertising expense. Allstate's property and casualty subsidiaries logged $651.3 million in advertising expenses in 2023, representing a 31.3% decline from the $947.7 million reported in 2022.

While not directly correlated to advertising spending, the insurer's private auto policies in force dropped by 2.9% in 2023, with the continued growth at National General more than offset by declines in the Allstate Brand. It experienced a small year-over-year increase within its homeowners lines of business, with policies in force up 1.1% from the prior year.

Progressive spends the most on advertising

Despite cutting its advertising expense by 29.6% year over year, The Progressive Corp. remained the biggest spender on ads in 2023 and was the only one to spend more than $1 billion. Progressive reported about $1.22 billion in advertising expense in 2023, down from $1.73 billion in 2022.

In its recent Form 10-K filing, the company disclosed that toward the end of 2023 and into 2024, Progressive "began to slowly increase certain types of advertising in select markets."

Progressive saw growth in in-force policies. At the end of 2023, the number of policies in force within its private auto business grew 9.1% to about 19.5 million, while its homeowners policy count rose 8.6% to nearly 3.1 million.

State Farm's ad spend falls below $1B

State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co.'s total advertising expense fell below $1 billion for the first time since 2018. It spent nearly $992 million on advertising in 2023, down from $1.01 billion in 2022.

State Farm was the only one among the four that saw a single-digit decline in ad spend at 2.1%.