Once upon a time, perhaps in 2017, a marketer could brief out a campaign, create the most creative and relevant content in the world, upload it to Facebook and reach a very large group of users who share an interest – say “Lung cancer awareness.” The digital advertising eco-system, once flooded with data points to help advertisers find the sweet spot of reaching the right person, at the right time with the right content, is about to dry up. Predatory advertisers and increasing public discomfort with corporations’ use of data has brought about big changes in legislation, regulatory requirements and risk that has upended the digital advertising eco-system. For healthcare marketers, whose audiences are unified by their interest in a sensitive topic – i.e. their health conditions – the rules are even more strict and the obligations to their patients are far greater.
5 watch outs
1. A return to traditional brand-led strategies
When narrow, data-led targeting becomes a tricky feat, the time-tested solution of a traditional broad-reach approach and brand-led strategy becomes appealing. A larger audience base comes with many potential upsides, including developing awareness and understanding with audiences before their diagnosis or reaching relevant groups that narrow targeting had accidentally filtered out. Redefining success metrics to focus more on attention, category and brand awareness and a move back toward upper funnel presents great opportunities for commercial outcomes, but also to utilise creativity in your efforts to solve for content with cut-through for a mass audience.
2. The context issue
An ad takes on meaning based on personal preconceptions, understanding of the logos or products depicted within it, and an array of contextual clues. As we dilute controls on who we serve to, we have less understanding of what these are for our end viewer. For example, what does the headline “more control, less effort” mean to a person with diabetes vs a person with high blood pressure? If they can’t recognise the device pictured or the brand name behind the message, are they likely to believe this treatment is an option for them?
The follow up questions to this are inevitably, ‘how do we make our content more obvious and relevant?’ or ‘how do we use more generic targeting capability, like demographics, to tailor audiences?’ This is equally dangerous territory if it leads down a path of using proxy metrics to exclude audiences: are we inadvertently discriminating against those with equal right to treatment? Or alternatively, if we try to shortcut relevance by using stereotypes, we may inadvertently reinforce them. Damaging tropes of morbidly obese people as the face of Type 2 Diabetes or Homosexual men for HIV treatments broadcast to a larger audience than ever may undo decades of diversity of inclusion work.
3. A changing cost equation
Hyper-targeting has historically come at a higher cost – the business model being to sell less inventory at a high price. While you may no longer pay this particular premium, your target reach will be larger than ever and more advertisers will be competing for the same undifferentiated inventory leading to higher bid costs, beyond the obvious digital platforms (Meta, Google, etc) but as far reaching as channels like addressable TV. Keep an eye out for the potential rise in value of contextual placements if you’re in a competitive market or wanting to place ads around a popular topic.
4. The rise of the walled-garden advertising ecosystems and ad platform innovation
As the new data-drought emerges, it will be the biggest consumer data hoarders – the platforms and publishers themselves – that will likely lead the charge on new ad-tech innovation. Given their dependency on ad revenue, they are both equipped and motivated to build solutions. What these look like in terms of targeting, measurement vs consumer protections remains to be seen, but ultimately they will mean different approaches per platform, with varying levels of integration with your own data.
Apple’s build may be able to combine data from all of their products’ usage and hefty owner database, while publishers and ad tech companies are looking to solutions using their own first party data and hashed email identifiers.
Meanwhile, Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative is set to be released in 2023, in which the Chrome Browser, which accounts for two thirds of internet usage4, will insert ads via “topics” based on users’ browsing behaviours. It’s expected to be very high level and generic – like “women’s clothing” or “politics” with recorded behaviour effectively re-setting every few weeks1.
5. Consumer ad overload
We may about to swing from “too creepy” to “totally irrelevant and annoying” on the ad relevance spectrum. We now risk increasing ad-blocker usage, and leaving the rest of the population to an infuriating digital experience – think Shein ads for a Gucci-buyer all under the banner interest of “women’s clothing.”
For sensitive topics like health-issues, this could be even more irksome, uncomfortable, and potentially even harmful. Will the nuances between someone being pregnant, having just been unsuccessfully pregnant, or struggling to get pregnant be addressable by targeting? Likely not in the proposed scenarios.
The options from here
Though we may wish for the simpler times of 2017, the changes lay down an exciting challenge for healthcare marketers.
Here are some key things we can do:
In the short term, look to other sectors impacted by Facebook’s interest-targeting rollback for inspiration. Charities that serve groups united by their ‘sensitive’ interest will be the ones to watch in the coming months. Movember, The Alzheimer Society, The Swedish Disability Rights Federation, Breast Cancer Awareness and other organisations promoting disease/disability awareness or treatment have been playing this game for a long time and successfully leveraging the power of creative to land their messaging with their target audiences. Within the FMCG and retail sector, look to inspiration from brands serving black audiences or specific ethnicities in cosmetics and haircare, or campaigns tied to religious holidays, like Tesco’s Ramadan celebration, as these groups will be impacted by the same challenges.
Start building a knowledge base by testing alternative reach strategies, like broad reach or contextual targeting, as well as the content and channels that will serve them. The more you test now, the better outcome you’ll have when you need to react at scale.
There is good news for healthcare marketers who already have sophisticated direct communications strategies – your owned channels will remain viable. Email subscriptions, chatbots on your website, published content on owned channels can still work just as hard for you. Similarly, first party data strategies may remain viable with minor pivots that can be managed at a platform level. If these are in place, great. If not, start building them. Consider how you might build an audience to activate against in the future by looking at your current collection & consent parameters now. This will become the core building blocks of your future marketing, combined with communications across broad reach and owned channels. Particularly if your lower-funnel and performance-type communications begin to become more expensive or less effective.
Finally, speak to our communications planning teams who can help you navigate the ambiguity. We know it’s a complex topic and we’ll be glad to help.
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