Pharma brands shifting their spend to connected TV (CTV) need to be able to make confident, cost-effective decisions that maximize their audience impact. That makes audience quality a nonnegotiable priority.
With traditional linear TV, brands aim for broad reach, casting as wide a net as possible, hoping to snag specific audiences within that net. CTV has changed the game for pharma and how brands can increase their efficiency, but programmatic buys based on third-party data fall short of optimized targeting, even if they include some health segments.
As opportunities within CTV grow, pharma buyers can expect more. With the right proprietary data, pharma advertisers can use CTV to achieve audience quality and analysis that is on par with digital channels. That means a new level of reach, resonance and ROI if the following factors are in place. These are the must-have audience features for successful pharma CTV buys.
Qualified—at scale
Pharma needs to target highly specific audiences, yet the typical demographic or geographic factors used to target TV audiences are little more than smart approximations. These factors aren’t enough to suggest whether someone is interested in health information, let alone whether they have a specific health condition.
With rigorous, proprietary data, brands can use CTV to target by condition. It’s now possible to use CTV to narrow in on the qualified segment of people who have engaged with condition-related content, allowing brands to focus their spend on households with a higher propensity to be interested in their brand. This makes it possible to reach targeted condition audiences at a greater scale than before.
Proven engagement
Digital advertising is highly effective because it’s possible to see whether audiences are in an active, information-seeking part of their health journey. That same information can now be used to inform CTV audience buys, offering brands the data and analysis advantages they recognize across digital channels.
Although audiences are typically considered passive while watching television, it’s also known that modern audiences are more likely to simultaneously watch TV and surf the web on a second device. Proprietary data can help brands harness these valuable cross-screen moments by translating insights from digital channels to CTV audiences and households. This means marketers will have a clear sense of where proven engagement exists within CTV audience segments, allowing marketers to further optimize their spend.
Data integrity
Data privacy is a particularly pointed concern in the pharma industry, as brands and companies must ensure that they are following regulations in how they reach audiences. Partnerships with companies and brands that exhibit rigor and accountability in their data collection and analysis are invaluable, as the best proprietary data has integrity baked into the process.
While data privacy is essential for pharma brands to keep in mind, the right proprietary data should fundamentally ease those concerns and allow them to confidently move forward in putting that data to good use.
Visible results
Even with a qualified audience at scale, proven engagement and data integrity, there is always room for iteration and improvement. Measuring CTV campaign results—metrics like impressions, ad completion rate, programming insights and more—gives full transparency on whether current tactics are working and provides further context to proprietary data, so brands have a clear sense of which audiences are worth pursuing.
Making the most of CTV opportunities
The CTV market is quickly evolving, and to make the most of these fresh opportunities, the guiding principle for pharma advertisers should be to optimize the audience. Rigorous proprietary data that enables highly targeted audience segmentation is the connective tissue that makes it possible to use CTV in a similar way to digital channels. On top of that, data accountability and transparent results allow for ongoing refinement and optimization of spend and strategy.
At Healthline Media, we’ve seen the difference in having a highly qualified, engaged audience. We compared the performance of our proprietary audience data against third-party data in digital channels. Our audience engagement rate across social platforms was 22% higher than third-party data offerings, while on our properties, audiences had a 7% lower bounce rate than third-party offerings and an 18% increase in clickthrough rates for advertiser creative.
With the largest proprietary condition-specific audience on the web, Healthline Media takes a comprehensive approach to giving pharma brands an opportunity to learn more about how they can target and connect with engaged and qualified health audiences through an emerging channel.
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Brendan McHenry, SVP strategy at Healthline Media, has been with Healthline for over six years and brings with him a 15-plus year passion for healthcare marketing. Brendan works closely with marketing and sales teams to lead strategy for major healthcare clients in pharmaceutical, OTC, CPG and other health-related industries. Before Healthline, he worked with top-tier clients at companies such as HealthiNation and Conversant.
