The Endemic Media Advantage in HCP Marketing
In today’s digital age, a challenge for healthcare brands is not just reaching healthcare professionals (HCPs) but engaging them at critical moments. One of the biggest opportunities to engage lies in connecting with HCPs during their research phase, before they’ve made a prescribing decision. This is where endemic programmatic media serves a substantial role in a marketing plan.
What is programmatic endemic media and why does it work?
Programmatic endemic marketing is effective at enhancing advertising efficiency, driving real-time engagement, and generating return on investment (ROI). But what is programmatic endemic media and what makes it effective?
Programmatic endemic media refers to advertising inventory that brands can activate programmatically on healthcare-related, and specifically HCP-focused, websites and electronic health record (EHR) platforms. This includes a wide range of publishers:
- Traditional medical journals
- Medical research and news sites
- Consumer-focused medical sites
- Platforms that HCPs interact with during office visits such as EHR
In a 2023 study, 61% of HCPs indicated they trusted ads more in endemic environments. Unlike traditional non-endemic banner media, which can include a wide range of content from news sites to instructional articles, endemic media captures the attention of HCPs when they are in a patient-focused, working mindset. As an example, an ad for a diabetes drug has a potential greater impact on Dr. Smith when she is reading new research around diabetes, compared to when she is browsing a general news website.
Traditionally, healthcare brands execute direct buys to run media on the websites of healthcare endemic publishers. While effective, these buys can be cumbersome due to decentralized reporting, differing capabilities by publishers, and substantial work needed to set up ad and business operations. IQVIA Digital’s Endemic Marketplace mitigates these challenges by providing a single platform that allows brands to plan, activate, and measure media across an entire marketplace of highly premium and curated endemic medical publishers.
Breakthrough findings for programmatic endemic media
Using endemic media is a powerful strategy to create relevant experiences for HCPs, increasing reach, script lift, and marketing effectiveness in healthcare.
A recent case study conducted by IQVIA Digital showed the impact of adding programmatic endemic media into an HCP engagement strategy. IQVIA Digital’s Media Operating System powered a campaign promoting a medication for wakefulness, treating excessive daytime sleepiness due to narcolepsy or obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). The results showed an additional 14% lift in new prescriptions when endemic and non-endemic media ran together, compared to only non-endemic media.
These compelling results underscore the potential of programmatic endemic media to enhance the performance of media campaigns. With our Endemic Marketplace, healthcare marketers and brands can unlock the power of endemic healthcare media and reach HCPs in a more impactful and efficient way.
Tapping into endemic media for your engagement strategy
Programmatic endemic media can be integral to any campaign where engaging HCPs is the goal. In our webinar, “Better Together: Intelligently Deploying Endemic and Non-Endemic Programmatic to Improve HCP Engagement”, experts from IQVIA Digital explain how marketers can plan and execute endemic and non-endemic programmatic media together to unlock campaign performance.
One key feature of endemic inventory is that it is mainly desktop-focused, which may lead to lower site interactions than benchmarks typically seen across non-endemic. Why is this? Within endemic websites, HCPs are often interacting with much more intent with medically relevant content, which can result in lower click-through-rates (CTRs). For example, if an HCP is conducting research on a medical website, they may see brand messaging, but they are not likely to click on it and navigate away from the work they are engaged in. However, the value in adding endemic lies in the increased trust in these advertisements and thereby deeper impact on treatment decision and real-world action.
What to look for when evaluating programmatic endemic solutions:
- Complete transparency and control: When looking for a programmatic partner or platform for endemic media, make sure they provide a full understanding of all publishers that are available and the properties within the publishers that can be targeted.
- Preferred access to premium healthcare publishers: Tapping into an endemic marketplace may provide inventory benefits such as priority and preferred levels of access to supply from select publisher partners.
- Turnkey integrations with standard programmatic capabilities: When building endemic media into your multi-channel engagement approach, it should be as seamless to activate as any other media type within your platform of choice. All assets that can be leveraged on a standard non-endemic banner should be able to be used within an endemic ad.
- Comprehensive campaign reporting and measurement: Look for solutions that provide weekly gross prescription metrics, including new-to-brand prescribers and patients, to be able to pivot and optimize campaigns in-flight. For a deeper understanding of real-world impact and full campaign performance, ask your partner for a net impact study.
Ready to get started with programmatic endemic media?
Endemic media can help your campaigns reach their full potential – IQVIA Digital’s experts are ready to help your team explore the powerful, end-to-end capabilities of our Endemic Marketplace and Media Operating System. Contact us today.
