EHR and telehealth platforms leveraging programmatic solutions to better engage healthcare experts, creating huge opportunity for pharma brands
PARSIPPANY, NJ – January 13, 2022 – Amid the turmoil of the recurring waves of the pandemic, pharma marketers are shifting their focus to new and innovative solutions to engage healthcare professionals (HCPs), which has led to acceleration of programmatic messaging technologies in the sector.
As the latest report by Doceree, the first global network of HCP-only platforms for programmatic messaging, suggests around 69% of pharma marketers in the U.S. now prefer programmatic messaging platforms to reach out to HCPs, utilizing its ability to segment healthcare experts and align their communication for optimization and better business outcomes.
To understand how programmatic is evolving, Doceree delved into the inventory and campaign behavior trends of its various partners, studying 1,100 campaigns. These were run on a mix of 165 publisher platforms via Doceree by 102 advertisers – consisting of consumer healthcare and medical devices companies, life sciences brands, hospitals, and diagnostics, covering more than 100 specialties.
The report – ‘Programmatic Trends in Pharma HCP Marketing 2022’ – points that pharma’s digital ad spending has risen considerably worldwide and the trend is expected to grow further on the back of programmatic fueling its growth.
“We are seeing 5 out of 10 dollars spent on digital being set aside for programmatic messaging,” said Harshit Jain MD, Founder and Global CEO, Doceree. “The outlook for digital campaigns targeting HCPs within digital channels is promising as we see pharma brands earmarking a significant budget to programmatic marketing.”
In addition, the report captures the latest trends that are shaping the programmatic pharma HCP marketing space:
Programmatic gains prominence among endemic publishers
In 2021, there was a jump up to 53% in the exposed programmatic inventory of endemic publishers – HCP-only digital platforms such as medical education sites, HCP networking sites, medical associations, and medical journals that HCPs visit to advance their professional knowledge or to connect with their peer group – on the back of their partnership with specialized ad exchanges.
First party data makes contextual marketing valuable
Piqued interest of pharma brands in first party data and a significant surge in performance campaigns on endemic walled garden, and point-of-care platforms – e-prescribing (eRx), telehealth, and electronic health record (EHR) platforms – where data is collected directly from the HCPs via log-ins. There has been a 39% year-on-year increase in the usage of such platforms.
Big opportunity in HCP’s clinical workflow
Point-of-care networks are valuable assets for pharma marketers to enrich communications during an HCP’s workflow – from lab test to the stage of diagnosis to writing a prescription – and deliver informative messages at decision-making moments while they are in a professional mindset. Further, 29% of marketers globally are mulling boosting budgets for trigger-based campaigns on point-of-care channels as they are in dialogue with partners for planning and activation.
Account-based marketing creates a buzz
Brands are eager to keep up their spending across secondary-based institutions such as hospitals, nursing homes and research institutes in 2022 when targeting HCPs of a particular specialty. The data analysis of the report disclosed a 135% increase in spending on account-based campaigns by brand marketers handling medical devices in 2021 over the previous year.
“When executed properly, programmatic is a powerful tool to bring targeted scale for pharma marketers,” adds Jain. “For publishers, it offers promise to align relevant messaging and platform experience for HCPs visiting the respective sites.”
About Doceree
Doceree is the first global network of HCP-only platforms for programmatic messaging. Doceree facilitates messaging between life sciences brands and healthcare professionals through an extensive global network of digital endemic and point-of-care platforms to programmatically deliver at scale accurate and transparent messages to HCPs. To learn more, visit doceree.com.