The problem, according to Mangano, “is the way we are buying it, transacting and ultimately measuring TV. Historically, buying and measurement from the 1950s to now hasn't really changed. It’s still tied to GRPs.” For Mangano, that misses a great deal of opportunities for both marketers and viewers. “It was something that was fine for many decades, but today it feels very prehistoric,” he asserted.
“Historically, the GRP was based off of reach and frequency. We didn't really have the ability to go much further. Now we target one to one in the majority of cases. The measurement also needs to be on a one to one basis as well,” he noted. Mangano explained that a campaign can have, “massive frequency and reach very few people or you can reach a lot of people and have very low frequency.” But now we have the ability to be very specific in how we identify viewers and aggregate them, beyond the usual demographics, to include very specific buying inclinations and motivations. Measurement must be able to keep up with the marketplace. “You need to get to the next level, which is a profile of who you're reaching so you know you're reaching the right targets,” he added.
DeepIntent’s focus is on the health sector and here, the value and importance of one to one targeting is paramount. “If we're reaching a lot of men and it's a health condition that only affects women it's not good. Because we're a DSP, the foundation of what we do is retargeting one to one. The DSP is the backbone of how the Internet serves ads,” he noted. And, with the addition of CTV, “television is now moving into a platform that is has the kind of accuracy that digital ads have had for years.” This now enables TV in the form of CTV to have the same level of targetability as there currently is in digital.
For viewers, the experience is seamless. He explained that, “We've done research and found that TV viewers have no idea whether they're watching CTV or regular TV. They're just watching TV and they're getting served ads.” He also shared that these viewers are okay with ads, understanding that advertising is the foundation of TV content funding. All of this enables companies like DeepIntent to not only target but also quantify very specifically who they are reaching.
In an era of one to one targeting, privacy is a huge priority. “There are two levels of privacy. One is legal, which is a top priority of ours. The other is ethical,” he stated. Sometimes you can adhere to legal standards of privacy but the ethically, it may be a no go. This is especially true in medical advertising. “The key thing we always do is we never use health information for one to one. We build models that help us find people more likely, but the reality of it is not based off of anyone's individual health information,” he assured. The data from the served ads is aggregated and anonymized which gives Mangano the ability to measure, “the rate at which you reach the right patients or the people who are exposed and took specific actions. But we'll never know which one of the million people actually were the ones.”
DeepIntent is also able to parse, “How frequently we reach individuals and on what platforms. That platform could be TV versus mobile phone versus desktop, and it also could be app or channel for which you have been exposed. All that gives us the ability to have a full picture of the media campaign itself,” he noted. In addition, the data is also placed in an analytics engine which delineates specifically what different combinations of exposures drove action. “And because we also market to physicians, we also do analysis where we identify the patients who went to the doctors,” as a result of seeing the campaign.
“With our CTV analyses compared to linear TV, we are typically seeing an increase in the ability to find the right patients using CTV over linear TV as well as seeing higher rates of treatment,” he explained. There are huge benefits in finding the right patients for a medication, “because you're impacting more people for every marketing dollar spend and that ultimately means healthier people, living longer happier lives,” he added.
The past is not necessarily prologue for the future of pharma advertising. “When I first started in the health analytics industry 15 years ago, I spent a lot of my time trying to help pharma understand the internet space and market it. A lot has changed in terms of more advanced marketing and the industry has changed too. There is a lot more focus on privacy and other laws,” he explained.
Since the pandemic, which has normalized telemedicine while at the same time caused some people to delay treatments, the call for better and more individualized treatments has never been greater. “The pharma industry has realized that digitally there are many ways to reach both doctors and patients and they're leveraging that more than ever. We're starting to see behavior changes that support more digitally focused communications and interactions. For us at DeepIntent, our ability to deliver the messages, whether to patients or doctors, creates efficiencies that weren't there five years ago,” he concluded.
This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com
Artwork by Charlene Weisler
