A Complete Guide to Programmatic Marketing in Healthcare

From the early days of the printing press, radio, and billboards that enabled ads to circulate widely, advertising has come a long way. Technology has refined and almost completely transformed the ways in which advertisers reach audiences. Online advertising has become a new marketplace to reach potential buyers in the internet era. What started as pop-ups and banner ads on specific websites, with pricing being negotiated manually with the site owners, advertising has evolved into an automated and highly efficient process, where ads are bought and sold in real time and in milliseconds with the help of ad networks and ad exchanges.

What is Programmatic Advertising?

Programmatic advertising is an automated process of buying and selling digital ad space using artificial intelligence (AI) for optimization and real-time bidding (RTB) for instantaneous auctions. In programmatic advertising, instead of manually negotiating ad placements, advertisers and publishers use platforms like demand-side platforms (DSP) and supply-side platforms (SSP) to buy and sell inventory across websites, apps, and platforms.

Programmatic advertising removes the human factor from the ad buying and selling process, making the purchase of digital ad space faster and cheaper. Ads are priced, sold, and bought via a RTB auction that happens in less than 100 milliseconds!

Moreover, in programmatic advertising, software and algorithms make it possible to target specific sections of the population so that ads can be delivered to the right person at the right time. It is for these reasons that programmatic advertising is being used in all industries, including retail, automotive, travel, finance, entertainment, technology, and healthcare.

Let’s learn more about programmatic advertising in healthcare.

Programmatic Advertising in Healthcare Marketing

While in traditional marketing, the audience is general population, healthcare marketing targets healthcare professionals (HCPs)–an extremely niche audience segment. Healthcare marketing also operates within strict regulatory framework and even minor violations related to data privacy or compliance can lead to grave consequences. Thus, precision targeting and regulatory compliance comprise two critical requirements of healthcare marketing.

Using AI-driven automation and real-time bidding (RTB), programmatic advertising helps healthcare marketing in the following ways:

• Deliver messages to verified HCPs
• Target HCPs based on specialty, behavior, or prescribing patterns
• Deliver ads across verified environments, such as online medical journals, electronic health records (EHRs), and point-of-care (POC) systems
• Deliver contextually appropriate content
• Deliver messages at the precise moment they are required
• Ensure HIPAA compliant marketing while maintaining data privacy in accordance with GDPR and other regulations.
• Scale campaigns to include multiple geographies, channels, and specialties as per requirements

Thus, programmatic advertising ensures better ad performance and delivers greater efficiency through precise targeting, real time bidding, relevant and compliant advertising, and data-driven decision-making.

Core Elements of Programmatic Advertising

Programmatic advertising works on a closely knit network and relies heavily on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), software, and algorithms. The primary components of programmatic advertising include a platform for the demand side- DSP, a platform for the supply side-SSP, and an ad exchange platform.

1. Demand Side Platform (DSP)
   

   DSP is the advertiser side of the process which enables pharma marketers to place or buy ad inventory. DSP helps the advertisers with the following:
   - DSP stores third party data and user-profiles and combines information with bids from advertisers.
   - DSP decides which ads to serve and where on an endemic website or EHRs
   The pixel that publishers include on their website provides data to create audience segments, sending the information to the platform. Advertisers benefit from the right placement of the ad while publishers gain from the highest bidder winning.

2. Supply Side Platform (SSP)
   SSP is used by digital publishers to sell, manage, and optimize online advertising space.
   SSP helps publishers:
   - Manage ad inventory and its placement position, size, and format
   - Optimize price per impression through RTB
   - Control campaign settings, such as frequency and targeting
   
3. Programmatic Ad Exchange
   

   Programmatic ad exchange can be considered a digital marketplace where pharma marketers and healthcare publishers buy and sell ad inventory in real time. An ad exchange enables the following:
   - Connects demand side (DSP) and supply side platforms (SSP)
   - Facilitates real time bidding RTB
   - Matches audience as per requirements
   - Manages multiple formats of display ads
   - Ensures compliance
   Some ad exchange systems, like Doceree combine DSP, SSP, and DMP under one roof to provide seamless experience to the whole ecosystem.

4. Data Management Platform (DMP)
   DMP is an independent platform that collects, manages, analyzes, and activates data. It provides comprehensive user profiles to advertisers so that the data can be used in a programmatic algorithm to target the right audience. Advertisers use DMP insights in combination with a DSP, but publishers use them along with an SSP.

How does programmatic platform benefit healthcare advertisers?

Before programmatic advertising, it was challenging for advertisers to access ad inventory. Automation solved the problem by making it much easier to understand and buy ad inventory.

Key benefits of programmatic advertising for advertisers include:

• Precision targeting
  This allows advertisers to segment the HCP audience to deliver ads only to the targeted HCPs, based on their specialty, behavior, or prescribing patterns. Doceree’s integrated ad-tech platform employs AI and machine learning tools to ensure that messages are delivered to the right HCPs at the right time, delivering higher engagements and subsequent conversions.

• Scalability across endemic and non-endemic channels
  Programmatic advertising lets advertisers launch and scale campaigns rapidly without needing to negotiate separately with each publisher. Unified controls via a single platform help maintain consistency, optimize performance, and improve efficiency.

• Built-in compliance
  Programmatic advertising has built-in mechanisms to ensure data privacy and ensure adherence to regulations such as HIPAA and GDPR, obviating the risk of regulatory violations.

• High efficiency
  The programmatic platforms give access to several networks and multiple ad channels. Programmatic platforms such as Doceree POC or Endemic, let advertisers gain access to telehealth platforms, physician networking sites, EHRs, programmatic emails, medical journals, medical education sites and medical associations.

• Transparency and control
  Programmatic advertising lets advertisers see what they are paying for and control all aspects of ad placement. AI-enabled dashboards of programmatic platforms such as Doceree enable advertisers to track campaigns efficiency in real time and with complete transparency.

How does programmatic platform benefit healthcare publishers?

Programmatic advertising provides healthcare publishers with the opportunity to monetize their platforms by hosting ads relevant to their specific audience, while maintaining the integrity of the platform, and meeting compliance requirements.

Programmatic advertising also provides them access to multiple bidding time arrangements and deal structures offering greater transparency, control, and revenue opportunities.

Key benefits of programmatic advertising for publishers include:

• Simplicity and effectiveness
  Publishers can optimize their ad sales with automation tools that reduce the time required to find advertisers. With programmatic platforms like Doceree, publishers can access a wide range of pharmaceutical clients with a simple tech integration process.

• Relevance & control
  When HCPs visit publishers’ site, they are served with ads that are relevant to them. Programmatic platforms like Doceree allows its publishers to exercise full control by letting them customize ad placement and ad type.

• Higher revenue
  Programmatic advertising can significantly increase publishers’ margins, helping them earn more from their available ad space.

Programmatic platforms such as Doceree, prioritize the highest paying ads allowing publishers to improve their earnings through premium CPM/CPC rates.

The kind of granularity offered by programmatic advertising is tough to ignore both for healthcare publishers and pharma marketers.

The Future is Programmatic

Healthcare advertisers and medical publishers have long sought an approach that combines efficiency with regulatory safety, without compromising on revenues. Programmatic advertising is the ideal solution to all marketing woes owing to its automated process of buying and selling ads, precision targeting, regulatory compliance, and real-time optimization. Businesses aiming to succeed in the rapidly expanding healthcare market must adopt programmatic advertising as a part of their strategy.