Running insurance ads where you are licensed: provinces, states and what Meta lets you do
How licensing shapes an insurance broker's ad campaign in Canada and the US, what geographic targeting is still allowed for financial products, and what to tell your agency at onboarding.
Insurance licensing is provincial in Canada and state-based in the United States. Advertising, on the other hand, is national by default. The gap between the two is where brokers get into trouble, either by paying to reach people they cannot write, or by writing copy that implies a reach they do not have.
The rule we build every campaign around
Campaigns run where you are licensed, and never beyond. At onboarding you tell us the provinces or states you hold a licence in, and the campaign is built to reach people there. It sounds obvious. It is also the thing most often skipped by agencies that treat an insurance broker like any other local business.
What Meta still allows for financial products
Under the special ad category for financial products, Meta removes most demographic and interest targeting, but geographic targeting remains, with limits. You can target a province, a state, a city, or an area around a point, with a minimum radius that is larger than ordinary advertisers get. You cannot exclude by postcode in the fine-grained way you once could.
In practice this is enough. A broker licensed in Alberta runs an Alberta campaign. A broker licensed in three states runs three ad sets, one per state, so the numbers can be compared. The creative then does the finer selection: an ad that mentions Calgary winters and hail claims reaches Alberta but speaks to Calgary.
Quebec and language
Quebec brings French-language advertising requirements that go beyond translation, and a broker licensed there should raise it explicitly at onboarding so the campaign is built for it rather than adapted afterwards. We treat it as its own campaign, not a copy of the English one.
What to tell your agency on day one
- Every province or state you are licensed in, and any you are licensed in but do not want to write.
- The lines you sell in each, because a home and auto licence in one province and a life licence in another are two different campaigns.
- Any carrier or regulatory rules on what you can say in an ad. Some carriers restrict the use of their name; some regulators restrict claims about savings.
- Where your calendar is, so booked calls land in the right time zone.
Why this matters for cost per lead
A campaign that reaches people you cannot write does not just waste the ad spend on them. Those people fill in forms, you call them, and you discover on the call that you cannot help. That is your time, and it pushes the cost per qualified booked call up in a way the ad account never shows. Getting the geography right on day one is the cheapest optimisation there is.
If you are an insurance broker in Canada or the US and want this run for you, the intro call is fifteen minutes and an honest answer.
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