Article: Programmatic - The Evolution of Marketing Automation - Feb 2020
By DHC and the Experts
Programmatic for Pharma Won't Be Hurt by Privacy Trends
Why won’t privacy changes be a death knell for programmatic in pharma? Intouch Group’s EVP of Media, Justin Chase explains:


CMI/Compas’s VP of Programmatic, George Tarnopolsky agreed that operationally, pharma has already been working beyond just cookies, particularly with regard to HCPs. “Especially on the topic of HCP media buying, healthcare is already uniquely addressable, as we currently transact on NPIs.”

In other words, please take a moment to thank your MLR teams! Lots of great work has already gone into creating a path forward where marketers will be able to succeed in a post-cookie world. RJ Lewis Founder & CEO of ehealthcare Solutions addressed the landscape and distinguished between HCP and consumer efforts currently:

Evaluating the Next Evolution of Consumer Marketing Automation
Chris Neuner, CEO of PulsePoint assures the following:

“As long as an advertiser can demonstrate 1st party ownership of data, you will be able to continue to use your 1st party data through Google and others, even if it passes through an intermediary, such as a trading desk.”
USER ID LANDSCAPE IN EARLY STAGES
Apple Device ID: IDFA | Google: GoogleID | LiveRamp: IDL

Thinking Critically About the Customer Experience
It also means that marketers charged with overseeing programmatic need to be educated on industry best practices around targeting for sensitive health conditions. For example, it’s important to know what tactics are restricted by the top tier platforms. And while we earlier mentioned that MLR often plays a key role in keeping their marketing counterparts on the right side of these issues, one should not assume that there’s a corporate-level policy already in place. RJ Lewis suggests…

When navigating the ethics around targeting, a key resource for marketers, agency, technology partners and publishers is the National Advertising Institute’s (NAI) release of Guidance for Health Audience Segments. Several of the experts we interviewed all pointed to the January 2020 release of these guidelines as an important step for the industry. Among the highlights is the reinforcement of the position that the use of health data, retargeting, and geo-targeting for health audience is not endorsed. In a recently issued POV, Crossix experts noted two top areas under “targeting approaches to avoid.”
Targeting Approaches to Avoid
- “Segments containing some individuals based on their actual healthcare data.”
- “Any health targeting approach that uses Sensitive Information, such as actual medical records or online browsing behavior, requires opt-in consent from users.”
Looking Forward
Experts agree that the landscape will continue to shift further towards 1st party data-centric approaches, while additional details around the changing privacy rules for 3rd party data and cookies are fully understood. There is also a sense of consensus that most of the privacy regulations will continue to be at the state level, requiring marketers to pay close attention to privacy best practices, starting with understanding the NAI Guidelines and their individual organization’s policies.

The DHC and the subject matter experts represented in the membership will continue to analyze the innovation opportunities around programmatic. Today, we will leave the reader with this insightful summary of the immediate future from George Tarnopolsky:
