Advertising/Marketing Trends to Expect in Q1 of 2025

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.

What are some advertising/marketing trends you expect to see in Q1 of 2025?

In healthcare, you know, access to the real world data, tools like I was describing, allows us to create, you know, align messaging across both the physician and the set of patients that they're engaging with. We expect this to be a pretty big part of media strategy going forward. Another major trend that we're seeing is the integration of market access and marketing. So high cost drugs, especially, you know, your GLP-1s, Ozempic and cheap have a lot of barriers to access. So commercial success in pharma is going to be as much a function of making sure patients know how to, you know, move through the insurance system, and actually qualify to get on a given medication, as it is, making a patient aware and interested in taking a given product to, you know, improve their lifestyle.

Trying to tie those two things together and provide educational materials is definitely going to be a growing trend. And then, you know, the last one would be, you know, as third party cookie. Deprecation continues to roll out, referenced, you know, like people need to understand, you know, if I'm not going to be doing third party cookie based targeting, what are the intelligent ways that I can buy media by channel, by, you know, what sites are popular, by what content is popular. And so, I think we are beginning to see a greater amount of investment in, you know, media, rather than audience based buying, which is heavily driven by, you know, clean room supported analytics that look at both, you know, the patients and the media activity in a secure way.

So, we're doing something like that with our partners, cargo right now, and I know others are also beginning to have this question about, like, what is the natural Audience Quality. Where are places that people, who have a given condition are more likely to pay attention or be interested that aren't just endemic websites about the condition, but like the say, psoriasis patients are more likely. Quickly to, you know, consume content in the afternoon. When it comes to CTV, can we use that to improve our efficiency without needing to have, you know, an audience in the loop to make that an effective buy.