Everyone in healthcare marketing wants to do media better. They want the easy button—press it, trim the budget, and watch the sales roll in. But in reality, the equation isn’t that simple. Consumers expect personalization and a seamless digital journey, yet they also bristle at the idea of advertisers using personal data to reach them. And let’s be honest—most people don’t even like ads. They just want you to show up, relevant and helpful, at the exact moment they need you. In this edition of Vital Signs, we’ll explore why more organizations are asking the same question: Should we build an in-house media team, or partner with an agency?

We’ve all seen them—60-second commercials that pop up during our favorite TV shows. In these commercials, everyone seems to be dancing, mountain biking, or kayaking to happy music while the list of potential side effects is described in the background. With revenues exceeding $600 billion, it is not surprising that pharmaceutical companies spent almost $8.1 billion last year on paid advertising, according to Endpoints News. Seventy percent of that was spent on linear TV. The top 10 pharma advertising brands alone contributed to a combined total of $1.68 billion in ad spend. But are they necessary? Do they work? In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll address those two questions. We’ll also explore what the rest of us marketers can learn from pharma advertising—TV advertising’s fourth-largest industry.

When you think of Gen Z (age group 11-26) and media, a litany of words come to mind: social media, influencer, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, video games, Netflix, podcast, livestream, etc. But as far back as early 2017, research by Kantar Millward Brown found that 55% of Generation Z respondents view out-of-home (OOH) positively. This is consistent with their view of all traditional media (cinema 53%, magazines 51%). It’s also a whole 20 points higher than any online option (desktop display 32%, search 32%, and mobile display 30%). In 2018, AdAge/UNiDAYS affirmed this when they found “84 percent of Gen Zers surveyed said they pay attention to digital out-of-home ads in familiar media placements such as trains, malls, airports and taxis.” In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll discuss why out-of-home (OOH) media is one of the most surprising Gen Z media trends and how to leverage it to reach this audience.

Gen Zers will decide, almost immediately, whether or not they are interested in something. This includes which brands they love and which businesses they hate. In a world where skippable ads and subscription services are the norms—where ads are optional and only require a quick swipe or click of the skip button to get rid of them—how can you use your marketing dollars to reach and influence this massive consumer segment? In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll look at Gen Z media consumption. We’ll also offer three insights on using your media budget to reach, influence, and convert this audience.

Brands spend a ton of money getting the word out, driving engagement and generating sales, but fraudulent practices are costing advertisers billions every year. In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll talk about ad fraud practices separating you from your hard-earned ad dollars and costing you sales.

So, you have the insights to drive your media plan and your messaging but are you really using media “right?” In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll talk about how to ensure your creative content is made to work ideally with each medium in the plan to maximize the power of your campaign with effective marketing messages.

There’s an invisible battle waging in the background of the internet. The prize? Your attention. Brand websites, social media apps, and search engines are all vying for your attention by applying algorithms that facilitate showing you content based on the probability that you’ll want to see it. In today’s edition of Plain Talk, we’ll explore where digital targeting is evolving and how to utilize invited personalization.

Have you ever been to a webpage that wasn’t optimized for your phone properly, and the ads blocked the content? How about waiting so long for an ad to disappear that you clicked on the ad, then clicked the back arrow just to see if it would end sooner? Well, you’re not alone; 90% of those surveyed find digital ads annoying. In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll look at problems with programmatic advertising and the damage targeting top-of-funnel metrics, like impressions and clicks using broad ad networks, can have on your brand.

Unfortunately, many companies are focused on the immediate success of digital performance-based tactics while neglecting the brand identity that they worked so hard to build. This imbalance of focus means that many businesses risk damaging or even losing their brand identity. In today’s Plain Talk, we’ll discuss performance marketing vs. brand marketing. We’ll look at ways to strike the right balance between the short-term benefits of performance marketing and the long game—building a brand that will endure.

For years, we’ve used digital advertising as an efficient and effective means of reaching exactly who we want to reach, with the right message, at the right time. Ad tech and publishers have been competing to offer better targeting, more capabilities, and better tracking, and each ad tech call offers something new—some new proprietary technology to make advertising better, stronger, and faster. Then came the year of bad news (COVID-19, murder hornets, flying sharks), and it’s all falling apart. Consumer and legislative pressures driving greater privacy requirements in advertising threaten to erase the media targeting and ad tech advancements we’ve become accustomed to incorporating into our plans. As we face a future without using cookies, we have to ask ourselves, “What now?” In today’s edition of our Plain Talk series, we’ll delve into what the future of digital advertising without cookies will entail. We’ll also explore why it’s not as scary as you might think.