When you hear the phrase, “pharma TV advertising,” what comes to mind first … Expensive? Big brands? Mass market?
Many pharma marketers and agency TV buyers tend to believe myths about TV that no longer align with today’s media landscape and data technologies. But by understanding the history of these myths – and what’s changed – you’ll also understand the full power of TV. Because nothing can speak to your audiences quite like TV. And now, there’s no need to sacrifice better results, cost efficiency, or compliance. Here's five myths about pharma and TV that are no longer true.
Anyone who’s ever received (or read) a privacy notice knows that personal information is protected at the federal and state level. Specifically, HIPAA’s stringent privacy rules prohibit the use of personally identifiable health information for advertising without patient consent. In recent years, we’ve also seen a major increase in state-level privacy regulations, like the My Health My Data Act, that have specifically targeted the use of health information with additional restrictions. And for many brands, protecting privacy is also an ethical issue.
Why it stuck:
The ubiquitous presence of privacy legislation in our daily lives helped solidify the impression that it’s too risky or difficult to safely use anonymized patient clinical data for more precise targeting. Marketers and their legal teams have chosen caution and practicality – and few revisited their approach even as technology advanced.
What’s changed:
Privacy-safe, de-identified audiences created with aggregated, tokenized data have emerged as a powerful alternative to general demographic targeting (age, gender, etc.). Personal data is, and should be, hands off. But by replacing personal identifiers with non-reversible tokens (i.e., tokens that cannot be reverted into the original data), marketers can match de-identified clinical data with rich, de-identified consumer data, for brand-specific, compliant targeting.
How it started:
When were the metrics used to buy linear TV developed? In 1950! – with almost no change since. Gross ratings points (GRP) estimated what percentage of an audience is viewing a program and how many exposures they might get, and audience demographics could be linked to program content and viewership. Naturally, this has worked well for mass-market reach, and pharma brands were encouraged to think of TV this way – as a top-funnel awareness play.
Why it stuck:
Traditional, demo-based linear TV has lacked the tools needed for more narrow targeting and downstream measurement. However, it remains popular due to the ease of activation and reasonable costs, despite the challenges of reducing costs and measuring brand impact.
What’s changed:
Connected TV (CTV), data-driven linear TV, and addressable TV allow brands to reach niche audiences at scale using digital-like targeting and measurement. With the right first- and third-party data sources, these platforms can reach hard-to-find or specific subpopulations for less “noise,” more precise targeting, and more bottom-funnel conversion.
Is linear TV still effective for reaching specific groups? Yes, such as viewers over 65, per eMarketer. (They spend five hours daily, whereas Gen Z barely hits the one-hour mark.) But savvy brands are allocating more budget to complement linear when they need to drive conversion among more specific audiences.
TV has traditionally been a high-budget game, and for good reason – 30-second national spots during popular programs are expensive. And limited ad space in coveted time slots drives up costs further. That’s on top of what it costs to produce even a modest commercial. Given these expenses, along with limited ability to target or measure, ROI has been hard to prove for smaller brands.
Why it stuck:
Pharma marketers have defaulted to other digital channels for marketing to rare disease patients or specialty treatments, where reach and ROI can be more easily tracked. The rise of digital has made TV continue to seem more costly – even as prices stayed steady over many decades. Linear TV’s one-size-fits-all pricing models also excluded smaller brands and lacked transparency that enforced the perception: it’s not worth it for niche or smaller players.
What’s changed:
Addressable TV and Connected TV (CTV) enable more efficient ad buying for smaller, high-value audiences. By using advanced audience modeling, marketers can now focus on more specialized or conversion-ready audiences, and buy just the impressions most likely to convert, improving cost-effectiveness for smaller brands or rare disease campaigns. If linear TV seemed like a gamble, a strategic mix of addressable, streaming and linear placements offers more of a sure thing.
In traditional TV media, scaling up meant loosening up your targeting. Going from a specific cable network or provider to a national buy resulted in more people seeing your ad – but fewer who matching your ideal target. There was no way to optimize for audience quality in real-time or avoid wasting impressions. No wonder ‘scaling up” became synonymous with “lower AQ.”
Why it stuck:
AQ is typically used to segment campaign audiences, with the priority being to focus on the highest deciles. And that meant that expanding required including lower-scoring deciles – diluting the overall AQ for the campaign. As a result, some pharma brands saw diminishing returns on spend as reach broadened, creating a potential catch-22.
What’s changed:
Hyperlocal audiences, built on smaller geographies, make it easier to scale smartly, instead of using broader media markets. For example, at OptimizeRx, we rank and score 35M+ zip-9 area codes based on brand eligibility signals. This enables brands to find their ideal reach and scale – without compromising AQ. What’s more, by applying our patented AI technology, we can automatically re-score and rank zip-9s throughout the course of TV campaigns, so media is always optimized for geographies with the highest AQs.
Cross-channel attribution was virtually nonexistent for many years, especially in the HIPAA environment. While the proliferation of media channels created new opportunities, it increased the number of platforms and made it even harder to resolve identities and unify audiences without violating privacy.
Why it stuck:
Pharma brands stayed cautious to avoid re-identification or privacy non-compliance when trying to stitch together audiences. And measurement remained siloed and top-line; for example, TV got brand lift and digital got click-throughs. Even as tracking individual channels improved, marketers struggled to connect TV and see the big picture.
What’s changed:
Privacy-safe identity resolution (tokenization, clean rooms, and ID graphs) and hyperlocal, portable audiences allow for omnichannel audience activation and measurement. It’s now possible to reach the same audience with synchronized messaging across CTV, digital display, audio, and even EHRs. Marketers can safely add TV for even bigger “surround sound” impact and get holistic measurement, including Rx lift, HCP activation, and more.
Today’s TV landscape is diverse, chaotic, fragmented – and wonderfully rich with opportunity. The winners in this expanding medium will put aside the myths and embrace the data, modeling, and privacy-safe audience technologies that make the right TV strategy just as cost efficient, measurable, and precise as other channels. And best of all, marketers never have to miss out on the benefits of TV’s un-ignorable, unique storytelling power.