Comparethemarket.com.au was launched in Australia in 2012, six years after the launch of comparethemarket.com in the United States & UK. Using the comparethemarket.com.au service, Australian customers can compare a number of products based on price, features, and more. These products include health insurance, car insurance, and energy. In 2015, the company signed a deal to secure Bupa, one of Australia's largest health insurers, as a participating health fund. The deal ensured that Bupa products could be compared on comparethemarket.com.au, alongside products from health funds like ahm and HBF Health Fund. Comparethemarket.com.au was the first commercial comparison website in Australia to disclose the amount of commission it receives from participating health funds. As of 2016, the standardised flat fee equated to a net present value of 27.75 percent of the first-year premium of the health insurance product sold by the company. Comparethemarket.com.au continues to compete against other comparison services in Australia, like iSelect and Choosi.
Meerkat Campaign
Compare the Market is perhaps best known for its marketing campaigns featuring meerkat characters Aleksandr Orlov and his Head of IT, Sergei. The meerkat advertisements started with Aleksandr Orlov's mission to clear the confusion up for Australians who mistook his website comparethemeerkat.com.au for comparethemarket.com.au. The same marketing campaign was launched years earlier in the United Kingdom for comparethemarket.com, which ended up topping a Nielsen consumer poll to be dubbed “UK’s most loved ad”. As of 2017, the UK business continues to use these characters in their own marketing. Another meerkat character, Baby Oleg, was introduced at the end of 2015. The storyline continued with Aleksandr Orlov buying the Compare the Market business, and introduced a human character named Tom. In 2017, the company launched a limited run of meerkat toys for their health insurance customers. Aleksandr's catchphrase, “simples”, is so well known that it can be found in both the Macmillan English dictionary, as well as the Oxford English Dictionary.
