DTC Advertising: Finding the Right Prescription

Direct to Consumer (DTC) pharma advertising has its advocates and its detractors. Some believe that it puts valuable medical information in the hands of consumers while others believe that it has a controversial underside, doing less to protect patients and more to spur sales. For planners in the DTC advertising space, a data-driven approach to the media decision-making process is imperative. Planners need to understand what opportunities are available for hyper targeting and in what advanced solutions they should invest as complements to the modern mix.

Targeting the right consumers with DTC advertising while protecting privacy can be achieved with a combination of different PII datasets and followed by a careful crafting of audience segmentations that combine both broadcast and cable. Some companies, like television media solutions company Cadent, use a blind match process through third party partners like Experian which combines anonymized subscriber data with other personal attributes such as purchase data or prescription data. This data is then ingested into their platform to create more efficient buys for their pharma clients.

"Cadent's pharma business has grown dramatically, especially in this past Upfront and we expect it to be a category of tremendous growth for us, in part because of our ability to use data-driven media plans for our clients," said Jim Tricarico, CRO of Cadent Network. "Our pharma advertisers have seen great results by using a combination of data-enabled plans alongside national reach campaigns, across both cable and broadcast, to reach their audiences at different points of the purchase funnel."

One of Cadent's data partners, TiVo, uses direct match. According to Bill Harvey of Bill Harvey Consulting, "The direct HIPAA-certified match is (in my opinion) the best of breed privacy protected pharma solution out there. Unlike solutions involving degrees of fusion and lookalikes, it's all direct match. Unlike the other solutions, it works both for post evaluation analytics of ROI and its leverageable components, and also for pre-buy and in-flight optimization for TV and digital."

"When HIPAA regulations prevent a 1-to-1 addressable solution, there is an option to add another layer of TV impressions that don't jump right to the traditional TV DMA," said Shelley Stansfield, Director Special Ops at demand-side targeted TV platform Centriply. "Rolling up audience counts with a certain condition to the zip, county or a custom region can preserve privacy while still achieving efficiency in TV media delivery by finding areas of high concentration across the country."

Targeting to the individual can easily be achieved in digital, especially mobile, making it a seemingly desirable medium for DTC advertisers. Digital's capability to hyper target, however, may skirt the boundaries of privacy. "In regard to privacy concerns on hyper-targeting patients, I see this in online ads targeted based on the patient's Internet searches," explained Dr. Bruce Rector of Rector Consulting and Doctors for America.
There is a regulatory reason for data hyper-vigilance in DTC advertising. The FDA's Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) has, according to their website, "an active research program designed to investigate applied and theoretical issues of relevance to direct-to-consumer (DTC) and professional promotional prescription drug materials. OPDP's research supports the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) goal of science-based policy while maintaining its commitment to protect the public health."

According to Kantar Media, pharma spending on direct-to-consumer advertising in 2015 totaled $5.4 billion in 2015 compared to $4.3 billion in 2014. Not only was this a +19% year-to-year increase, it also equaled the high mark of $5.4 billion spent in 2006. Growth in DTC spending can be explained by the number of new FDA–approved drugs on the market, patent expiration and more competition in the market. These factors are generally trackable in the short term.

Share of spend is more revealing. While digital advertising for a range of consumer products and services is accelerating often at the expense of TV, the opposite is true for pharma. "Since 2011, the portion of DTC spending on TV has increased from 55% to 69%," according to the Pharmaguy at Pharma Marketing blog. In 2015, Pfizer allocated nearly 30% of its billion-dollar budget to network television while Novartis spent nearly half of its budget in cable.

Investments in television can also be explained by an older target demo. According to the latest Nielsen Total Audience Report, adults age 50+ spend the most hours with television a week. The Pharmaguy adds, "as pharma focuses more and more on drugs that treat diseases of old age such as Alzheimer's, it's to be expected that more and more of the industry's advertising budget is devoted to TV."
For DTC advertisers and planners, understanding how to unlock the full potential of television advertising requires an awareness of the data and solutions in market, not only because of the FDA but because the future demands it.

As Shelley Stansfield noted, "We were recently at a data conference and it was predicted that medical data collection is the next breakthrough arena for data mining and advancement. Disease states measured at the hospital level, clinic or office level provides trending data for predictive analytics. It was generally agreed that when predictive and cogitative data applications can drive awareness in media to both professional circles and consumers everyone will benefit."

This article first appeared on www.MediaBizBloggers.com

Cadent and TiVo Make a Powerful Data Partnership. Interview with Jim Tricarico

In a media environment of increased data opportunities, Cadent’s recent partnership with TiVo to create an enhanced TV targeting solution for advertisers is particularly interesting.

Cadent’s core business, according to CRO Jim Tricarico, is as an unwired network that offers both visibility and verification to advertisers. “Cadent brings network like experience to unwired,” explained Tricarico. He added, “We deliver efficient GRPs across all cable networks – both large and small – and are able to access MSO inventory from over 200 MSOs of all sizes and reach.” Cadent’s MSO partners include the large operators such as Comcast, Cablevision, Charter, Cox, FIOS, UVerse and Dish as well as 190 smaller operators such as Suddenlink and WOW! resulting in an overall US coverage area of over 80%. But overall coverage levels can be deceiving according to Tricarico who said, “It is the smaller MSOs that fill in the rest of the US because we look at coverage on the zone level. For example New York City has 96 zones. So we need to be inside the zones and not just the overall DMA. That is why we have the only pure national footprint. And that allows us to translate into more like a national network, measured by Nielsen and posted using MSA.” Ultimately, Cadent enables advertisers to complement their network buy using their unwired network of inventory for greater cost efficiency, frequency and program targeting.

Now, with Cadent’s new data and sales initiative, advertisers can take advantage of TiVo’s 2.3 million household sample, six other data providers, as well as Experian’s buying and user behavior data to go beyond age and gender. This enables advertisers to reach their specific target niche audiences in an anonymous, privacy-protected manner. “We start with a client’s broad demographic,” said Tricarico, “and then narrow it down to focus on a client’s best prospects. We buy on a general demo and overlay data from TiVo and Experian for more precision to get to a micro dataset. Then we see which networks, across all 200+ cable networks we represent, to find the most appropriate dayparts, days and time periods to reach the micro dataset.” The result is the delivery of two different MSA posts – one on the general demo target and the other as a custom post for the micro dataset.

The response from the industry has been very encouraging, according to Tricarico. “We have three successfully executed campaigns – New Orleans Tourism, 1-800-Flowers and Cabot Financial. In addition, Modi Media is impressed with what we are doing and is partnering with us on high index buying, Other media groups are beginning to come to us too,” he stated.

Jamie Power, Managing Partner at MODI Media, has found success in Cadent’s data targetability. She noted, “Data and technology have changed what is possible in television today, we are now able to target below traditional demography with more precision.  Historically, television is planned using self-reported data and then measured through panel based data.   We are now we are utilizing census level set-top-box data to better target a brand’s customer. Our goal is to optimize television allocations against a brands’ strategic target and identify the best inventory. We are able to show clients that deeper targeting increases their ability to reach their strategic target by as much as 70 to 200 percent.  Better data helps us drive better results for our clients.”

“The core business is still growing,” said Tricarico, who added, “I see this extension growing quickly. I would not be surprised if it will become 20% of our revenue by next year at this time.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com

Cadent Network's Great Upfront "Debate"

I believe there is always room for an energetic discussion in the media business, even when it is billed as a “debate” and both sides essentially agree on the matter at hand. There was just such a “debate” presented this week by Cadent as part of its Upfront event. It consisted of two panels designed to answer the question: What can we expect from this Upfront and future Upfronts when data moves to center stage and content needs to further adapt to multiple platforms?

"We are exploring the pros and cons of audience versus content today,” said Jim Tricarico, CRO of Cadent. “There have been many changes in the media ecosystem in the past two years and today is a coming out party for Cadent. We have rebranded for a new heritage and a new vision, repositioned and totally reinvented the service backend with technology, data, analytics and automation."

This is certainly a media market in flux. But many look at it as an opportunity. “The marketplace has never been more exciting and challenging,” Tricarico explained. “The market is changing fast with programmatic, addressable and advanced TV. While the TV landscape changes and evolves, prices continue to go up and ratings are down. There is fragmentation in viewership and shrinkage in ratings.”

With lower ratings and reduced ad loads, networks can be selective on what types of business they decide to take. Right now it looks like they may make room for higher priced scatter. Cadent’s promise is that they deliver across a full national footprint comprised of more than 200 partners, 210 DMAs and 80 million homes. The company is focusing time and resources on technology development, automation and data analytics and has just built an inventory management system for more effective media planning.
Nick Troiano, Cadent’s new CEO, revealed the company’s future plans. “I came to Cadent through their acquisition of BlackArrow, which we then rebranded for Cadent,” he said. “We are able to do dynamic ad insertions through VOD, OTT and DVR and even deliver targeted ads in live TV. TV is changing. The living room is changing. We are uniquely qualified to transition advertising into this new TV world.”

Agency Perspective
In moderating the debate between content and audience, Jack Myers, Media Ecologist and Chairman of MyersBizNet, asked the first panel of agency executives where they thought the market was going. Erica Schmidt, Executive Vice President and Managing Director North America, Cadreon, responded with a data-centric perspective. “From the data viewpoint, we are in an interesting time in the industry and are thinking differently about TV buying,” she said. “There are the issues of pricing and harder to find audiences. This gives us an opportunity to think differently and we are basing our decisions on audience and data. There are huge pressures on CPMs but we continue to push the envelope.”

“So are we moving away from the golden age of programming?” Myers asked. Rino Scanzoni, Chief Investment Officer, GroupM, responded in the affirmative. “We have used content as a surrogate to identify audiences for years,” he explained. “The TV business is going away from looking at content to find audiences to using data to do so. We are moving to an audience-based transactional system.”

Catherine Warburton, Chief Investment Officer, Assembly added, “We have always been buying content and audience, so the idea of content versus audience is not new. You have to balance super premium content for a client. We are looking beyond TV for audiences. We look across all screens. There are places other than actual TV to get these audiences.”

Client Perspective
Turning to clients in the second panel, Myers asked Tim Sullivan, former Vice President, Media at The Wendy's Company and Andy Jung, Director of Marketing and Communications at The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company whether they, like the agencies, had business silos. “You are dealing with silos even on the client side,” Sullivan responded. “We are currently in an evolution as to how to move money to different forms of advertising. TV is trying to learn about new solutions and we clients need to be willing to change.”
“Silos are a huge reality of the business,” Jung added. “I need to sell a certain amount of grass seeds within this year and we rely heavily on big box stores. But we also see changes with new home ownership and the new entry points. We are looking at technology. Weather is a big data factor for us and we need to reach audiences in an abbreviated time period.”

“Is the business becoming more adversarial with the use of data intelligence?” Myers asked.  “Definitely,” Sullivan replied. “Everyone is leveraging different types of data. It will be interesting to see if we can work together or if there will be turf battles. We want solutions so that everyone understands that we are trying to build our business in the most effective way with the highest results.”

Conclusion
The debate of content versus audiences may not be settled during this Upfront but if we as an industry can all work together to find the right balance of creative and quantification, we will be able to move the entire media ecosystem a big step forward.  As Myers summed it up, “It is a changing game and we need to remain flexible.”