CANNES – Programmatic advertising is moving beyond its reputation as a lower-funnel tactic and gaining new traction among pharmaceutical brands, thanks to evolving TV upfronts, improved measurement tools and greater flexibility in buying, according to experts speaking at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Francis D’Hondt, senior vice president of addressable health at Interpublic Group’s Kinesso, said the long-standing perception that programmatic only serves performance marketers is outdated.
“The idea that programmatic is only a lower funnel tactic at this point hasn’t been true for the last couple of years,” D’Hondt said in a panel discussion hosted by Beet.TV contributor Mike Shields. “It’s always been a full funnel solution… something that we tap into for awareness, something that we tap into for convergence and kind of across the board.”
Quicker results for campaigns
D’Hondt noted that improved data access and near real-time reporting have made programmatic TV buys more appealing to pharma advertisers who previously faced long delays in campaign readouts.
“Whereas before… it was a lot of waiting for two or three months to get readouts on what performance was like, making optimizations then. And then you sort of missed an entire quarter of media,” he said. “With partners like The Trade Desk, we’re now able to actually optimize in platform… making things a lot more flexible and kind of bringing the same benefits of programmatic to pharma as a whole.”
Expanded access to streaming inventory
Baron Harper, senior director of business development at adtech firm The Trade Desk, said changing expectations around reach and performance are reshaping how pharma brands engage in upfront deals.
“Historically… it’s really been a reach vehicle that only the biggest brands with the biggest budgets and blockbuster budgets could afford to participate,” Harper said. “But now with Netflix, with Hulu, with Paramount, with Peacock opening up their inventory programmatically, you can have rare disease brands, mature brands that have lower budgets actually participate and take advantage of the biggest reach vehicle, the most engaging reach vehicle that we have.”
AI raises privacy concerns
Both panelists emphasized that increased regulatory scrutiny and privacy concerns continue to shape how pharma advertisers use data and AI.
Harper said marketers must understand how algorithms make optimization decisions: “The FTC [Federal Trade Commission] is very clear that there are data signals, even non health data signals that should not be used to infer health conditions… it’s incumbent on us… to target and optimize and measure in our platform without risking violating privacy of any patients or HCPs.”
D’Hondt added that while AI-driven optimizations are vital to campaign success, they must be handled carefully in sensitive verticals.
“It’s never… just staying away from advancements in general, but we have to be a lot more careful about things in the pharma space,” he said. Bringing TV budgets into programmatic channels, he added, means “machine learning AI algorithms we have in DSPs… are now leading to stronger performance in the TV channel.”
How curation is changing strategy
The discussion also highlighted the growing role of curation and the open internet in driving transparency and better outcomes.
Harper argued that programmatic buying is far from commoditized: “The open Internet is a great place for us to create differentiation… we can measure objectively, and that’s how all of our platforms should be judged, is how we’re able to drive outcomes in a really transparent way on the open Internet.”
D’Hondt agreed, saying that accountability across the supply chain is crucial: “It just really, really drives home the importance of holding everyone accountable within the industry… having all of those options to bring all of those channels under one umbrella, but also making sure that you’re staying so on top of all of the offerings in market.”
Both speakers said the shift toward programmatic in pharma is only accelerating, fueled by the demand for flexibility amid regulatory uncertainty, new streaming inventory, and more sophisticated measurement tools that make data-driven TV buying possible for brands of all sizes.
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