The world of medicine is evolving rapidly. As treatments become increasingly specialized and personalized, consumers have also come to expect more personalization from their advertising experiences. However, without real-time audience signals, real-time optimization, and real-time measurement, pharma marketers are limited in their ability to execute timely, relevant campaigns. DeepIntent Founder and CEO Christopher Paquette shared in his keynote presentation at Digital Pharma East that time is the most critical factor differentiating good marketing from ineffective marketing.
In 2023, we saw how artificial intelligence dominated the conversation at DPE. As we review the key takeaways from this year’s conference, let’s explore how marketers plan to shift the paradigm to improve relevance, speed, and health outcomes in 2025 and beyond.
Making Way for a New Era of Hyper-Personalization
In a presentation by Murray Aitken, Senior Vice President and Executive Director of the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science, and Andrew Burkus, Senior Principal at IQVIA Digital, they explained how the market for new medicines is expanding tremendously. Fueled by innovation, the pharma industry is projected to launch 50-55 new drugs yearly over the next five years. Focusing on smaller and rare disease states, these specialized treatments will help drive better outcomes. But just as these medicines won’t be one size fits all, neither will the ways we engage, inform, and educate patients and providers about them.
Consumer expectations are changing. According to Michael Rowbotham, Commercial Innovation HCP Product Lead at Pfizer, our interactions with banks and online suppliers like Amazon have accustomed us to a new degree of hyper-personalization, leading us to expect more from pharma brands. “The doctor expects us to know where they are on the treatment paradigm, expects us to be talking appropriately about how they’re treating patients. Good data, to be hyper-personalized, is key,” he continued. “The speed at which we deliver solutions is changing dramatically. We have to be able to deliver an experience or service when the doctor or patient needs it or wants it.”
Promoting Health Literacy Throughout the Patient Journey
Consumers today have an abundance of information at their fingertips. Many are even turning to platforms like TikTok to inquire about their conditions. In a panel titled “Right Patient, Right Message, More Moments,” Courtney Cruz, Senior Director of Integrated Media Strategy at Pfizer, explained that “the biggest change in the patient journey is the amount of information out there. Everyone endeavors to deliver relevant content at the right time.” But even with all the data and technology we have available, sometimes “we get the right person at the right time with the wrong message.”
To remedy this, Ray Rosti, President of Klick Media, highlighted the importance of using content as a signal. “There is so much rich data in search behavior that can be indexed against how people search other conditions.” Searching for information online has allowed consumers to become their own advocates, improving their health literacy and influencing their healthcare decisions. Marketers can better understand how to reach them with the right message by evaluating the type of information they’re looking for.
Chris Paquette’s keynote also expressed the importance of promoting health literacy through effective marketing. He shared a staggering statistic: that 350,000 Americans die each year because they “fail to take basic preventative measures or engage with our healthcare system in a timely way.” With COVID cases rising again, he emphasized the need for health intelligent solutions and real-time data signals to deliver relevant information—e.g., vaccine-specific messaging—to consumers when it matters most.
Activating Omnichannel with Real-Time Data and Signals
Omnichannel has been a consistent topic of conversation at Digital Pharma East for years. Kicking off this year’s media track program, Katherine Freeley, Head of the Media Center of Excellence at Boehringer Ingelheim, spoke about the challenges of reaching consumers and HCPs with the right combination of media touchpoints and channels. Our objective, she said, is to “not only tailor the media towards the moment but also make sure the message is tailored to the medium, so it’s a more effective communication in the moment for those patients and HCPs.”
In a discussion titled “Mastering the Mix: Balance Linear TV, CTV, and Digital Plans in DTC Marketing,” the panelists discussed the changing media landscape and how it has challenged them to evolve their strategies. As the traditional walls of channels and mediums continue to come down, Krissie Begley, Associate Director of Media Strategy at AstraZeneca, stressed the importance of keeping the customer “at the center of our media touchpoints.”
Lisa Kopp Johnson, Chief Revenue Officer at DeepIntent, agreed, highlighting how we can use real-time data and insights to determine the right media mix for the customer journey. “There is so much opportunity ahead of us. The more data we can bring in that has real-time signals—that can be dynamic—that is such a powerful thing that changes it from data to insights to outcomes,” she said. “Ultimately, our job is to get information to patients as quickly as possible. The more inputs we have to do that in a timely way, the better outcomes we can drive as a result.”
With another successful Digital Pharma East behind us, our challenges as an industry have grown only more urgent. We need to reach health audiences with relevant messaging promptly. As more consumers expect to receive hyper-personalized advertising messages, we’ll see how real-time audience signals, optimization, and measurement will enable our campaigns to go further—and faster.
Want to learn more about using real-time signals to execute more timely, relevant campaigns? Discover how DeepIntent is elevating vaccine campaigns with real-world data and optimization.