Why data-driven linear is the last piece of the marketing puzzle

Pharma spends almost its entire advertising budget — a startling 75% — on live broadcast (or, linear) TV commercials, attempting to convert patients that may not even be watching. Instead of relying on demographics and other failed metrics for planning, marketers need to take a data-driven approach to linear investment to connect the entire television ecosystem, optimize budgets and leverage cross-channel attribution with a single custom patient audience.

Advertisers continue to rely on basic demographics and household-level measurement to target linear TV viewers, despite utilizing more sophisticated outreach tactics across all other channels. For example, a company with a drug for HIV may run a commercial during a late-night show popular among those aged 18-49. In this case, the assumption is that HIV patients would statistically be included within the demographic — despite not having any information on the audience’s health status.

However, health marketers can now be more precise in their targeting with audiences generated from real world data (RWD), or a patient’s entire health history — from doctor’s visits to prescriptions filled — based on insurance claims. The same privacy-safe custom patient audiences used in digital marketing can be activated across all TV, including linear.

This is achievable through artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), which transform Swoop’s extensive RWD universe of more than 300 million de-identified patients and 65 billion anonymous consumer signals into actionable segments. All segments are created based on brand-specific criteria, whether that includes patients who were recently diagnosed, those with a history of non-adherence, or patients suffering from a specific comorbidity.

Leveraging a single, targeted audience enables better planning; marketers can optimize the media mix according to consumer behavior and more accurately measure post-campaign results — making cross-channel attribution a reality. Armed with insight into how campaign performance contributes to script lift across all TV mediums, marketers can respond in near real time and shift spend if needed, reducing waste. This “one audience” can be activated and then measured to confirm reach and frequency as it corresponds to the Nielsen panel, which is a representative group of TV watchers.

Swoop is the only health data provider approved to match Nielsen’s panel at the respondent level, leading to more precise metrics against a desired patient audience that can be continuously resized to meet Nielsen’s viability standards. Nielsen’s planning and audience measurement tools provide end-to-end campaign insight, including reach, frequency and audience response. By integrating custom segments into Nielsen’s offering, health marketers can confidently pivot from outdated age and gender buying to data-driven linear, benefiting from higher audience quality (AQ). The higher the AQ, the greater the chance of script lift, which is the ultimate performance metric.

Instead of hoping to engage an impossibly large demographic — as the overwhelming majority will tune out — Swoop gives our partners access to tokenized patients across all TV inventory. In doing so, we’re unifying television, whether linear broadcast, household addressable or CTV/OTT, and targeting outreach. By selecting a partner like Swoop, it’s possible to decrease waste with cross-channel attribution and spend more strategically across all TV mediums.