Geico’s new ad campaign is asking customers to “taste the low rates” by parodying the taste test ads made popular by the soft drink industry. The series of ads from The Martin Agency features consumers sampling two different beverages, one representing Geico and another representing the competition. In each of the commercials, customers participate in a car insurance taste test and determine the Geico sample is superior to the competition. The ads end with the tagline, “Millions of people are choosing Geico.”

Over the past decade, the amount of money spent on insurance advertising has ballooned from $1.6 billion to more than $5 billion. As a result of this increased spending, television commercials for auto insurance have become more pervasive and seem to have taken over the airwaves. As Jeff Charney, the chief marketing officer for Progressive put it, “It's an arms race, and the ones with the best content will win.”

Maxwell the pig has come back with a vengeance, and the Geico spokespig that first squealed his way into America’s hearts back in 2010 continues to be just as polarizing as ever. Unlike his more prolific Gecko counterpart, Maxwell the pig has only appeared in two commercials, the second of which premiered a little over a month ago and features the pin wheel toting pig on a zip-line promoting the new Geico mobile app.

According to Ace Metrix, a California based company that monitors ad performance, the top rated insurance ad of 2011 was State Farm’s September 11^th Tribute that featured a group of children singing to New York firefighters. The extremely subtle ad ran over the weekend of September 11^th and didn’t feature any mention of State Farm until the very end of the commercial.