Pharma marketers prefer programmatic messaging platforms in India for improved physician reach

Telehealth platforms are leveraging programmatic solutions to better engage healthcare experts, creating a huge opportunity for pharma brands

As the latest report by Doceree, the first global network of physician-only platforms for programmatic messaging, suggests around 43 per cent of pharma marketers in India now prefer programmatic messaging platforms to reach out to physicians, utilising its ability to segment healthcare experts and align their communication for optimisation and better business outcomes.

To understand how programmatic is evolving, Doceree delved into inventory and campaign behavior trends of its multiple partners, studying over 1,100 campaigns. These were run on a mix of 165 physician-only publisher platforms via Doceree by 102 advertisers – consisting of consumer healthcare and medical devices companies, life sciences brands, hospitals, and diagnostics, covering 100+ specialties.

The report – ‘Programmatic Trends in Pharma HCP Marketing 2022’ – points that pharma’s digital ad spending has risen considerably worldwide and the trend is expected to grow further on the back of programmatic fueling its growth.

“The trend looks promising as we see pharma brands earmarking a significant budget to programmatic marketing,” said Harshit Jain MD, Founder and Global CEO, Doceree. “We are seeing 5 out of ten dollars spent on digital being set aside for programmatic messaging,” he added.

Besides, the report captures popular trends that are shaping the programmatic pharma physician marketing space:

1. Programmatic gains prominence among endemic publishers

In 2021, there was a jump up to 53 per cent in the exposed programmatic inventory of endemic publishers – HCP-only digital platforms such as medical education sites, HCP networking sites, medical associations, and medical journals that HCPs visit to advance their professional knowledge or to connect with their peer group – on the back of their partnership with specialised ad exchanges.

2. First party data makes contextual marketing valuable

Piqued interest of pharma brands in first party data and significant surge in performance campaigns on endemic walled-garden, and point of care platforms – e-prescribing (eRx),  telehealth, and electronic health record (EHR) platforms – where data is collected directly from the physicians via log-ins. There has been a 39 per cent year-on-year increase in the usage of such platforms.

3. Big opportunity in physician’s clinical workflow

Point-of-care networks are valuable assets for pharma marketers to enrich communications during a physician’s workflow – from lab test to the stage of diagnosis going to the point of writing a prescription – and deliver informative messages at decision-making moments while they are in a professional mindset.

Further, 29 per cent of marketers globally are mulling boosting budgets for trigger-based campaigns on Point of Care channels as they are in dialogue with partners for planning and activation.

4. Account-based marketing creates a buzz

Brands are eager to keep up their spending across secondary-based institutions like hospitals, nursing homes and research institutes going into 2022 when targeting physicians of a particular specialty.

The data analysis of the report disclosed a 135 per cent increase in spending on account-based campaigns by brand marketers handling medical devices in 2021 over the previous year.

“When executed properly, programmatic is a powerful tool to bring targeted scale for pharma marketers,” adds Jain. “For publishers, it offers promise to align relevant messaging and platform experience for physicians visiting the respective sites.”

Doceree is the first global network of HCP-only platforms for programmatic messaging. It facilitates messaging between life sciences brands and healthcare professionals through an extensive global network of digital endemic and point-of-care platforms to programmatically deliver at scale accurate and transparent messages to HCPs.