Welcome to the Data-driven Future of Programmatic Marketing – A Conversation with Tony Sherry, CRO of Data360
A Conversation with Tony Sherry, CRO of Data360
Earlier this month we were able to sit down with Tony Sherry to discuss programmatic marketing in healthcare. Tony’s extensive background at DeepIntent, and now with Data360 – makes him one of the true industry experts when it comes to reaching patients and HCPs with programmatic campaigns.
“Hi Tony, thank you for joining us! Could you give us an overview of your own background and how programmatic marketing has evolved in the pharmaceutical industry? “
Hi Jim, thanks for having me, really looking forward to the conversation. I have been in the healthcare marketing space for a little over 10 years. The biggest changes in the industry have come in just the last 5 years, especially in the healthcare vertical. The biggest change is the speed in which data can be activated and measured within platforms. When I started at DeepIntent almost 7 years ago, the idea of finding HCPs across programmatic inventory was very new. The majority of HCP spend was still with the HCP Health Endemic publishers. I would like to think we were one of the first to bring the idea of finding HCPs across programmatic inventory while delivering PLD (Physician Level Data) to market.
We started as a managed service platform and 90 percent of our campaigns were HCP focused. As we grew, we transformed into a full-scale healthcare marketing platform with HCP and DTC capabilities. We were the first to launch innovative planning tools and offer our own Patient Modeled Audiences that were created and activated directly within the platform. In about a year and a half our campaigns went from 90 percent HCP to 50/50 HCP/DTC.
The idea of having HCP and Patient activation in one platform gained massive interest from pharma marketers. Now there are multiple platforms in the space that understand the importance of this tactic and are leaning forward on this.
“How does programmatic marketing differ from traditional marketing in pharma?”
It’s all about reach and finding your audience wherever they are across multiple channels. The biggest difference now is that you can do this with precision. The audience segments that are available now are stronger than ever while still maintaining HIPAA compliance – this is due to new technologies and strategies available. This is especially important across channels like CTV (Connected TV). Pharma marketers love their commercials and buying linear TV. Now they can show the same commercials to a more engaged and accurate audience with less waste. Executing CTV programmatically also helps to understand how each channel (CTV, Display, Video, Audio) all work together to improve performance.
“Can you share a case study where programmatic marketing significantly impacted a pharma campaign?”
There have been so many, but one that stands out was a major pharma brand that was one of the first to embrace the idea of HCP/DTC integrated campaigns across all channels. This tactic was able to show that having a cohesive message to both audiences at the same time can have a significant impact in not only script performance, but also on the ultimate goal of getting patients and doctors to have a meaningful discussion about treatment options. With unique custom audience creation, we were able to reach HCPs and their patient populations and show their journey. The client was able to see if we were (A) Reaching the right audiences based on “AQ” for patients and “reach against target list” for HCPs, (B) were they meeting in a clinical setting based on “exposed visits”, this showed if the patient, HCP or both were exposed to an ad prior to the clinical visit and (C) the bottom of the funnel was “incremental script lift”.
The reason why this was so exciting was that it had never been done before. Just a few years ago, this type of measurement would take 6 months to a year to deliver, and it was mostly modeled analytics. So the speed of the data and the integrated approach was a massive success.
“What have you seen as some of the challenges for programmatic marketing?”
I think one of the biggest challenges for healthcare programmatic is data consistency between audience building activation and measurement. There are audiences out there that perform extremely well for a campaign, but if the data used to create the audience does not line up with a specific measurement partner, then it could be measured inaccurately based on data on the back end not lining up. Looking at HCP identity, some vendors have multiple digital IDs mapped to the NPI, but if the measurement vendor does not have as many identifiers, then the measurement can be skewed.
“How do pharmaceutical brands overcome data accuracy challenges in programmatic marketing?”
A few years ago, this was a bigger challenge, but now measurement has become a lot faster and more accurate, and it is getting harder and harder for data providers to have inaccurate data. On the HCP side a lot of pharma brands have NBE (Next Best Engagement) strategies and the PLD coming back from programmatic platforms needs to be extremely accurate in order to direct other actions based on ad exposures. The issue now is who has the best digital IDs mapped to NPIs for accuracy and scale. On the patient side, you are now able to get AQ scores a lot faster and optimize for success within weeks of a campaign launch. Not too long ago, you would get an AQ score once or twice a year. There are even planning tools available today that show predictive AQ and audience overlap prior to launch.
“Can you speak to intent based deterministic data? Do you have any examples?”
Intent is very powerful data for both HCP segments and patient segments. Understanding the HCP and patient journeys are super important for marketers. Knowing which stage a customer is in based on their diagnosis or treatment journey is key to delivering the right messaging. This is a lot harder to execute on the patient side based on HIPAA compliance. What’s very interesting are data companies (like Data360) that have hand raisers, consumers that have opted-in to receive more information about a specific disease state and/or treatment.
To me, these segments are a marketers dream as they are finding customers who are lean-in on their disease state and are asking for more information and are willing to learn. This should be the holy grail for marketers, but the issue is getting them comfortable with targeting this audience on a one-to-one basis. I think that working with working a 3rd party verification partner like Mirador or Integral to get these audiences certified HIPPA compliant would help marketers with their comfort levels.
“What do you see as the future of programmatic marketing?”
I think the future of healthcare programmatic looks very promising. There are multiple platforms out there doing very interesting things in the space and only getting better and technology gets smarter. The idea of HCP and DTC integrated campaigns is going to keep gaining more adoption, the results are very impressive. Fast in-platform measurement is becoming a must-have for all marketers, the days of waiting 3-6 months for results are over.
Optimizing based on real-world metrics like AQ and script lift are also becoming the norm. Each of the major platforms out there have their own unique capabilities that marketers like. PulsePoint has HCP365, DeepIntent has their Patient Planner , TTD is going to be coming out with some new capabilities for HCP/DTC and they are the leader in the clubhouse as far as platform UX. IQM is a new platform to the pharma space that has built their own DSP and DMP and are making all the right data and measurement integrations to make a move in the space. It should make for a very interesting 2024 to see how all of this plays out.
“What are the top takeaways you’d like to wrap up with?”
Data, data, data, you cannot do programmatic healthcare well without best-in-class data. Innovation will keep coming and there is excitement around AI and new technologies that will assure the public and major pharma brands that their agencies and vendors have privacy and compliance top-of-mind when executing programmatic planning, activation and measurement. New optimizations and audience creation is also something that is exciting, there are start-ups like Fantix that use AI and Federated Learning to build HIPAA compliant models from any first party data set with the ability to optimize the actual models in real-time based on real world metrics like AQ and Script lift. Imagine a pharma brand with the ability to build HIPAA compliant segments based on their own 1st party customer data and seamlessly activate these audiences through any DSP.
“You mentioned that data is central in 2024. What can you share with us about Data360?”
Data360 has extremely clean data, meaning we own the entire opt-in and opt-out process within our platform. We do not scrap any of our data, so this allows for much faster data refreshes and more accurate digital identifiers for NPIs. We also have specialties that most other providers do not, like Pharmacists, Optometrists, Dentists and Nurses to name a few. We simply have one of the best identity graphs of any provider, large or small. There are 7.8M NPI numbers in the US, 6.13M of those are individual healthcare professionals, 1,783,380 are physicians and NP/PAs. Data360 has robust identity for all 6M NPIs, so that’s an additional 4.3M actionable NPIs compared to other data providers.
In addition to great identity coverage, one of our most exciting offerings is the ability to target and deliver unique insights based on intent. We understand the customer journey for HPCs and Patients and can share that knowledge with brands and agencies. On the patient side, we have 190 million hand raisers who have opted into our content to learn more about a specific disease state. These consumers are telling us that they have a specific ailment, or they are a care giver for someone who has a specific ailment. This is all opt-in and does not use any claims data/medical records like ICD10, NDC or CPT codes to create the audiences, its 100% self-reported and HIPAA compliant. Targeting these audiences programmatically has started to yield some very strong engagement and AQ scores.
In terms of specific measurable performance, some of our recent campaigns have been really eye-opening. We’ve seen 50-60 percent greater reach against the NPI universe, 3-6 times higher engagement rates across programmatic campaigns, and 30-40 percent cost savings on HCP/NPI data rates. As I mentioned, these results are due to the better quality of data used in the audience targeting.
“Thanks Tony! We appreciate you taking the time to speak with us today. This really was a valuable and in-depth look at programmatic marketing in healthcare!”
