Hello, Digital Publishers: What We Heard From Health Advertisers Was Loud and Clear

Provide marketers with authenticated prescriber audience reach across multi-channel platforms and you will play a prominent role in marketing budgets in the future.

Experts at the 2013 EHS Publisher Summit in NYC shared that, in some cases, their organizations are experiencing a fundamental shift to spending ONLY with publishers who can provide targeted HCP reach (as narrow as a list-match) across multi-channel platforms. Goodwill budget dollars and assumptive spends are becoming a thing of the past.

“Authentication is most important,” according to Alya Sherman, VP, Partner Innovation, CMI/Compas. One emerging authenticated platform is electronic medical records (EMRs).

In these cases, “there is an essential balancing act between frequency and exposure,” shared Sarah Bast, VP/Director, Media, Digitas Health. “Make sure you offer the physician something valuable – it’s not a vehicle for brand awareness. It’s better for information such as a formulary change announcement.”

“Where 100% of the HCP spend is against a prescriber target list, scale isn’t the objective,” began AJ Dopwell, Associate Director, Media, Razorfish Healthware. But don’t write off the value of reach. “Success varies by brand, by program, and by objective,” he added. Awareness campaigns still need scale, though run-of-site buys make more sense with a category publisher focused on health as opposed to on a much broader lifestyle or news site added Ms. Sherman.

Dan Haller, Media Supervisor, Heartbeat Ideas agreed that “you need some kind of relevancy at the starting point for a run-of-site buy.”

Watch for additional blog postings in the coming weeks as we share more about the valuable data, insights, and opinions that were the focus of the 2013 EHS Publisher Summit. Let us know if you’d like to hear about anything sooner.