Effectively Targeting Patients Without Cookies

In his video interview with Pharmaceutical Executive, Ted Sweetser, VP, Ad Partnerships and Strategy, PurpleLab explored the challenges and opportunities in healthcare advertising, particularly in the context of increasing data privacy regulations and the decline of third-party cookies. The discussion highlighted the importance of leveraging real-world data (RWD) to gain valuable insights into patient behavior and preferences. RWD, when combined with advanced analytics and privacy-compliant targeting techniques, enables more effective and targeted advertising campaigns. The conversation also touched on the potential impact of cookie deprecation on the broader advertising industry and the need for advertisers to adapt to a more privacy-centric approach.

As an industry, we’ve seen an increasing emphasis on data privacy, how have healthcare advertisers been able to effectively target patients without relying heavily on traditional cookie-based tracking methods?

Cookie based approaches have been one of the foundational tactics in trying to gain more efficiency in media buying, really, since the birth of the digital advertising ecosystem. Prior to that, what people were doing was, you know, you would make run of network buys and negotiate rates, and there are various ways to make, you know, things more efficient on the media buying side, but you really couldn't find a good way to make sure that your ads were showing up in the right TV screen or computer.

What we've been trying to do as an industry in the past few years, as you know, the cookie deprecation topic has grown increasingly important is to one strengthen the privacy approaches that are involved in addressable targeting. Using the same techniques as cookies, but with greater emphasis on consent of the Consumer to receive marketing materials, as well as finding ways to make sure that your ads are going to locations where the patient is most likely to be, oftentimes, this is thought of as medium mix modeling, or basically understanding the patient as a consumer. What mediums are they most likely to use? Are they a CTV viewer? Are they a linear viewer? Certainly, one of the things you can talk about there is, you know, for diagnoses or conditions that present more commonly in an elderly population, linear TV has always been a very effective channel, because we know that the age ranges there tend to skew older.

So, some of it has been going back to ground on older methods that, you know, were developed back in the Neil scenario, which extends back to the 50s. Others have been around. You know, can we get more people to opt in to the open, programmatic marketing system? And there has been a growth of that. We try to support both of these through real world data, which allows for analysis or execution of more first party opted in audiences. Two of the major tactics for those would be, for instance, the trade desks, UID 2.0 and live Ramp ID framework.