Healthcare Marketers Seek to Close the Loop from Ad Impressions to Patient Outcomes
CANNES, France – Healthcare marketers have been promising to “close the loop” between advertising and patient outcomes for years. Unfortunately, that loop has often resembled a circle drawn by someone riding in the back of an ambulance.
Connecting an ad impression to a real health outcome is unusually difficult. Patient journeys are complicated, medical data is highly sensitive and the healthcare system does not exactly glide along with the efficiency of a Cannes hotel bar tab.
Christine Grammier, vice president of global measurement products at LiveRamp, Scott Mackay, head of sales at CVS Media Exchange, or CMX, and Frank Lin, vice president and general manager at IQVIA Digital, discussed how marketers are getting closer to making those connections in a panel moderated by Beet.TV contributor Tameka Kee at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Pharma ads attempt a reputation transplant
Pharmaceutical advertising may inspire eye rolls, especially when a commercial’s list of possible side effects seems longer than the program it interrupted. Lin argued that relevant health information can still help patients begin conversations they might otherwise avoid.
“Pharma ads get a bad rep,” Lin said. Yet for a patient or caregiver dealing with a condition, a well-placed message can provide useful information before a doctor’s appointment.
Advertising has also helped reduce the stigma surrounding sensitive categories such as erectile dysfunction, women’s health and mental health, he said. The first step toward closing the loop is understanding whom an impression reaches and whether it encourages a meaningful conversation.
CMX occupies a particularly useful position because CVS operates across retail, pharmacy and patient care. That gives the media network signals that a typical retailer cannot collect between the breakfast cereal and the laundry detergent.
“Most RMNs, retail media networks, they’re looking at actual transactions, where we’re actually looking at health journeys,” Mackay said.
Seven out of 10 visits to CVS are motivated by healthcare needs, according to Mackay. CMX can connect advertising exposure with store engagement, conversations with pharmacists and actions such as prescription fills or refills.
The important question is no longer limited to whether someone saw an ad. Marketers can begin asking whether that person took a step toward better health.
Patient journey refuses to behave like a funnel
The traditional marketing funnel looks reassuringly orderly on a PowerPoint slide. The American healthcare system apparently has declined to participate.
“I wish the loop is this perfect circle that we’d all draw on the whiteboard,” Lin said. “It’s a non-linear journey that we all take.”
IQVIA follows medicines from clinical trials through commercialization and their use among patients in the real world. That broader view helps marketers assess more than whether an advertisement led to a prescription.
“The definition of patient outcome doesn’t stop at that script lift,” Lin said. “It’s really about the continuance of, is this patient getting better?”
That process can include the physician, nurse practitioner, pharmacist, insurer, caregiver and patient. In other words, the healthcare journey has a cast large enough for prestige television, but considerably more paperwork.
Data gets connected without revealing the patient
Bringing these signals together requires technology that protects a person’s identity. Healthcare data cannot simply be passed among companies like a beach-party invitation.
Grammier said healthcare companies use methods including tokenization and expert determination to de-identify information and prevent it from being traced back to an individual.
“The fundamental idea is that your data is de-identified in an expert way, ensured that it cannot be re-identified to you as a consumer,” Grammier said.
LiveRamp provides a clean-room framework that lets companies compare exposure and outcome data without directly transferring sensitive information. Platforms such as TikTok, Snap and Meta can provide advertising exposure data that partners use to determine whether messages reached the intended audiences. YouTube remains “a little tricky,” Grammier said, proving that even sophisticated data architecture must occasionally confront the digital equivalent of a locked medicine cabinet.
The analysis can show whether a person in an appropriate audience saw an ad, visited a doctor, received a diagnosis, filled a prescription and remained on the treatment.
“That whole journey is possible today in our ecosystem,” Grammier said, provided companies take additional steps to protect patient data.
Closed loop runs through drugstores
Mackay offered a practical example of how the process can work. A consumer might see an ad away from CVS, encounter the message again on a screen inside the store and then speak with a pharmacist.
That conversation could lead to the purchase of an over-the-counter product, a prescription fill or a follow-up with a doctor. The campaign crosses several channels while its effectiveness can be measured through connected signals.
CVS can also combine information from the front and back of the store to develop a more complete view of the customer’s healthcare journey. The company must do this without making shoppers suspect that the moisturizer aisle has developed surveillance capabilities.
“Trust is everything,” Mackay said. “That’s really our foundation.”
Consent is also critical. Mackay said CMX can avoid sending vaccination messages to someone who has already received the vaccine. It also seeks to avoid bombarding unvaccinated consumers with the same appeal until they begin hiding from the pharmacy app.
“It’s finding that direct balance,” he said, between educating patients and “not overstepping our boundaries.”
Precision doesn’t belong everywhere
Healthcare marketers may have access to highly precise information, but Grammier said they do not need to apply that precision at every stage of a campaign.
Detailed data can be valuable for measurement while consumer targeting can rely on broader audience models. That distinction lets companies assess whether a campaign worked without delivering an ad so specific that the recipient wonders whether their dermatologist has joined the media plan.
LiveRamp, IQVIA and CVS all maintain data ethics or privacy teams. Lin said IQVIA Digital also uses an ethics board to examine campaigns.
“It’s not just, ‘Hey, can we do this,’ but, ‘Is it ethical to do this?’” Lin said.
The goal is to give patients useful knowledge rather than merely drive prescriptions. Companies working with healthcare information must earn trust through standards that may exceed the minimum requirements of the broader advertising industry, he added.
Dashboard receives grim diagnosis
As healthcare measurement improves, Lin expects marketers to shift their attention from reporting results to acting on them.
“We also believe that dashboards are dead,” he said.
Brands have reached the “so what” stage of measurement, Lin added. A dashboard can report what happened, but marketers increasingly want to know how they should adjust placements, audiences and spending.
IQVIA is therefore moving from measurement toward optimization, working with media partners to shorten the time between gathering results and changing a campaign.
Grammier said optimization does not require telling a media platform that a particular consumer received a prescription. Marketers can use broader signals showing that certain placements or audiences performed better than others.
The future of healthcare measurement may involve less cumbersome planning, faster optimization and stronger privacy protections. It could even produce the rare pharmaceutical campaign that reaches the right patient, encourages useful care and stops showing ads once its work is finished.
For an industry still trying to close a stubbornly broken loop, that would qualify as a healthy outcome.
You’re watching The Beet.TV Leadership Sessions at Cannes Lions 2026, presented by LiveRamp. For more videos from this series, please visit this page. You can find all of our coverage from Cannes Lions 2026 here.
CANNES, France – Healthcare marketers have been promising to “close the loop” between advertising and patient outcomes for years. Unfortunately, that loop has often resembled a circle drawn by someone riding in the back of an ambulance.
Connecting an ad impression to a real health outcome is unusually difficult. Patient journeys are complicated, medical data is highly sensitive and the healthcare system does not exactly glide along with the efficiency of a Cannes hotel bar tab.
Christine Grammier, vice president of global measurement products at LiveRamp, Scott Mackay, head of sales at CVS Media Exchange, or CMX, and Frank Lin, vice president and general manager at IQVIA Digital, discussed how marketers are getting closer to making those connections in a panel moderated by Beet.TV contributor Tameka Kee at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Pharma ads attempt a reputation transplant
Pharmaceutical advertising may inspire eye rolls, especially when a commercial’s list of possible side effects seems longer than the program it interrupted. Lin argued that relevant health information can still help patients begin conversations they might otherwise avoid.
“Pharma ads get a bad rep,” Lin said. Yet for a patient or caregiver dealing with a condition, a well-placed message can provide useful information before a doctor’s appointment.
Advertising has also helped reduce the stigma surrounding sensitive categories such as erectile dysfunction, women’s health and mental health, he said. The first step toward closing the loop is understanding whom an impression reaches and whether it encourages a meaningful conversation.
CMX occupies a particularly useful position because CVS operates across retail, pharmacy and patient care. That gives the media network signals that a typical retailer cannot collect between the breakfast cereal and the laundry detergent.
“Most RMNs, retail media networks, they’re looking at actual transactions, where we’re actually looking at health journeys,” Mackay said.
Seven out of 10 visits to CVS are motivated by healthcare needs, according to Mackay. CMX can connect advertising exposure with store engagement, conversations with pharmacists and actions such as prescription fills or refills.
The important question is no longer limited to whether someone saw an ad. Marketers can begin asking whether that person took a step toward better health.
Patient journey refuses to behave like a funnel
The traditional marketing funnel looks reassuringly orderly on a PowerPoint slide. The American healthcare system apparently has declined to participate.
“I wish the loop is this perfect circle that we’d all draw on the whiteboard,” Lin said. “It’s a non-linear journey that we all take.”
IQVIA follows medicines from clinical trials through commercialization and their use among patients in the real world. That broader view helps marketers assess more than whether an advertisement led to a prescription.
“The definition of patient outcome doesn’t stop at that script lift,” Lin said. “It’s really about the continuance of, is this patient getting better?”
That process can include the physician, nurse practitioner, pharmacist, insurer, caregiver and patient. In other words, the healthcare journey has a cast large enough for prestige television, but considerably more paperwork.
Data gets connected without revealing the patient
Bringing these signals together requires technology that protects a person’s identity. Healthcare data cannot simply be passed among companies like a beach-party invitation.
Grammier said healthcare companies use methods including tokenization and expert determination to de-identify information and prevent it from being traced back to an individual.
“The fundamental idea is that your data is de-identified in an expert way, ensured that it cannot be re-identified to you as a consumer,” Grammier said.
LiveRamp provides a clean-room framework that lets companies compare exposure and outcome data without directly transferring sensitive information. Platforms such as TikTok, Snap and Meta can provide advertising exposure data that partners use to determine whether messages reached the intended audiences. YouTube remains “a little tricky,” Grammier said, proving that even sophisticated data architecture must occasionally confront the digital equivalent of a locked medicine cabinet.
The analysis can show whether a person in an appropriate audience saw an ad, visited a doctor, received a diagnosis, filled a prescription and remained on the treatment.
“That whole journey is possible today in our ecosystem,” Grammier said, provided companies take additional steps to protect patient data.
Closed loop runs through drugstores
Mackay offered a practical example of how the process can work. A consumer might see an ad away from CVS, encounter the message again on a screen inside the store and then speak with a pharmacist.
That conversation could lead to the purchase of an over-the-counter product, a prescription fill or a follow-up with a doctor. The campaign crosses several channels while its effectiveness can be measured through connected signals.
CVS can also combine information from the front and back of the store to develop a more complete view of the customer’s healthcare journey. The company must do this without making shoppers suspect that the moisturizer aisle has developed surveillance capabilities.
“Trust is everything,” Mackay said. “That’s really our foundation.”
Consent is also critical. Mackay said CMX can avoid sending vaccination messages to someone who has already received the vaccine. It also seeks to avoid bombarding unvaccinated consumers with the same appeal until they begin hiding from the pharmacy app.
“It’s finding that direct balance,” he said, between educating patients and “not overstepping our boundaries.”
Precision doesn’t belong everywhere
Healthcare marketers may have access to highly precise information, but Grammier said they do not need to apply that precision at every stage of a campaign.
Detailed data can be valuable for measurement while consumer targeting can rely on broader audience models. That distinction lets companies assess whether a campaign worked without delivering an ad so specific that the recipient wonders whether their dermatologist has joined the media plan.
LiveRamp, IQVIA and CVS all maintain data ethics or privacy teams. Lin said IQVIA Digital also uses an ethics board to examine campaigns.
“It’s not just, ‘Hey, can we do this,’ but, ‘Is it ethical to do this?’” Lin said.
The goal is to give patients useful knowledge rather than merely drive prescriptions. Companies working with healthcare information must earn trust through standards that may exceed the minimum requirements of the broader advertising industry, he added.
Dashboard receives grim diagnosis
As healthcare measurement improves, Lin expects marketers to shift their attention from reporting results to acting on them.
“We also believe that dashboards are dead,” he said.
Brands have reached the “so what” stage of measurement, Lin added. A dashboard can report what happened, but marketers increasingly want to know how they should adjust placements, audiences and spending.
IQVIA is therefore moving from measurement toward optimization, working with media partners to shorten the time between gathering results and changing a campaign.
Grammier said optimization does not require telling a media platform that a particular consumer received a prescription. Marketers can use broader signals showing that certain placements or audiences performed better than others.
The future of healthcare measurement may involve less cumbersome planning, faster optimization and stronger privacy protections. It could even produce the rare pharmaceutical campaign that reaches the right patient, encourages useful care and stops showing ads once its work is finished.
For an industry still trying to close a stubbornly broken loop, that would qualify as a healthy outcome.
You’re watching The Beet.TV Leadership Sessions at Cannes Lions 2026, presented by LiveRamp. For more videos from this series, please visit this page. You can find all of our coverage from Cannes Lions 2026 here.
