A few years ago, Carrie Craigmyle, now Senior Vice President of Strategy for DeepIntent, noticed that things were starting to change in healthcare advertising. She had been on the agency side of the business for more than 20 years, the last 10 of which were in healthcare. More and more budget was being allocated to digital advertising, and she was starting to see programmatic audience-based buying begin to make its mark in the healthcare industry.
Then she became familiar with DeepIntent's advanced demand side platform (DSP), which is purposely built for healthcare advertisers to plan, activate, measure and optimize programmatic campaigns, all within a single platform. And she knew it was time to switch her career over to the sell side.
According to Craigmyle, it is more important than ever for healthcare advertisers to consider connected TV (CTV) in their media buys this RFP season, and programmatic transactions can be a powerful way to make every CTV penny count. However, she recognizes that for a pharma client that is hesitant to test it out, CTV can be a bit foreboding. She offered up some perspective on programmatic buying that could simplify what newcomers need to consider during media planning.
First, remember one of the basics of marketing: defining the target audience. As Craigmyle noted, "In any media buy in healthcare it's about knowing who our patient is or who our healthcare provider (HCP) is that we want to reach."
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Programmatic helps not only with that, but also another marketing objective: to go where the audience is. With an 82% reach of U.S. households, CTV is an obvious choice.
Automated platforms for CTV can also allow marketers to maintain audience quality, and as part of that, assure that they are HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Account Act) compliant. This is key to optimizing a campaign.
Then there's the fraud factor -- an issue with any digital advertising, and CTV is no exception. This is particularly important given that pharma advertising must be HIPAA compliant, as must any healthcare DSP. Mitigating fraud is achieved with a legal team leading the effort to ensure that everyone involved -- from staff to data partners -- are up to date on the latest in privacy legislation and educated on the nuances of pharma advertising. Transparency is crucial.
DeepIntent helps advertisers with all of these needs, and much more, Craigmyle noted. For example, it can optimize in real-time. "We can track a healthcare provider being exposed to an ad and determine if they are actually writing prescriptions," she said. "We're able to do this by marrying impressions to actual claims data while remaining HIPAA compliant."
This data enables DeepIntent to take targeting beyond basic demographics, like Adults 25-54. Instead, marketers have the opportunity to tap into audiences who are modeled off diagnosed patients, or those currently being treated, which increases the likelihood of reaching a sufferer in the digital ecosystem.
Craigmyle encourages healthcare advertisers who are new to programmatic and CTV to stop waiting to try it. At the end of the day, what this data and technology affords the pharma marketer is an opportunity to reach the goal marketers always strive to attain: get the right message to the right people at the right time. The technology is the mechanism that helps to achieve that.
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The opinions expressed here are the author's views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage.com/MyersBizNet.