AI Needs Empathy, Not Just Efficiency: Omnicom Media Health’s Melissa Gordon-Ring
Artificial intelligence promises to make healthcare advertising faster, smarter and more efficient. It might even help patients find the information and treatment they need before they’ve spent three hours arguing with an insurance company’s automated phone system.
But there’s a catch. Healthcare involves actual human beings, with all their anxieties, vulnerabilities and inconvenient refusal to behave like neatly categorized data points.
That’s why empathy and trust must remain central to healthcare marketing, even as AI transforms media planning and buying, according to Melissa Gordon-Ring, global president of Omnicom Media Health.
Speaking with David Kaplan, a contributor to Beet.TV, at the Beet.TV Leadership Summit with Omnicom Media during Advertising Week New York 2026, Gordon-Ring discussed how healthcare marketers can balance technological innovation with the responsibility of communicating with patients and physicians.
Her message was straightforward: Technology should make healthcare more human, not turn patients into another optimization exercise.
Empathy isn’t an optional feature
Healthcare advertisers are asking more of their media partners, including greater transparency, measurable results and flexibility as technology and consumer behavior evolve.
They’re also asking for something that doesn’t always appear in a media-buying contract: patience and understanding.
“We should always ask for patience and understanding,” Gordon-Ring said. “They should ask us for that, too.”
That mutual understanding becomes especially important when advertising involves sensitive health concerns rather than the relatively low-stakes business of persuading someone to buy another pair of sneakers.
Gordon-Ring said effective healthcare marketing requires understanding patients’ experiences and the needs of healthcare professionals, or HCPs, at different stages of treatment.
A newly diagnosed patient, for example, may have very different informational and emotional needs from someone who’s managed the same condition for decades.
Marketers can use ethically sourced data and behavioral signals to understand those differences, but technology alone can’t provide the necessary sensitivity.
“The empathy piece has to stay consistent, and that doesn’t change,” Gordon-Ring said.
She emphasized the importance of balancing technology’s ability to retrieve information quickly with genuine human understanding.
Otherwise, healthcare communications risk feeling artificial or disconnected from the people they’re supposed to help.
Trust is the new currency
Consumers have more choices than ever when seeking healthcare information, selecting physicians and deciding which brands deserve their attention.
They can consult doctors, search engines, AI platforms and an apparently inexhaustible supply of online personalities offering medical advice with varying degrees of credibility.
That abundance of options makes trust increasingly valuable, Gordon-Ring said.
“I think the role that media plays in building trust has never been more important,” she said.
The challenge for healthcare advertisers is demonstrating reliability through consistent, meaningful interactions rather than assuming that brand recognition automatically translates into credibility.
Gordon-Ring compared building trust to making deposits in a bank account. Brands that contribute something valuable every day will accumulate an advantage over competitors that fail to earn consumers’ confidence.
“Those that actually can put in the trust bank every day something meaningful, not like a penny, but like maybe a dime or a quarter, are going to be the ones that win, because I truly believe that trust is the new currency.”
It’s an interesting proposition for an advertising industry accustomed to measuring success in impressions, clicks and conversions.
Apparently, trust doesn’t come with a convenient cost-per-thousand rate.
Healthcare could teach AI some bedside manners
Gordon-Ring believes healthcare could become a model for responsible AI adoption across the advertising industry.
The reason is simple: Healthcare organizations can’t afford to treat accuracy, privacy and human oversight as optional considerations.
“I absolutely believe that health can be the industry that teaches the rest of them how to use AI responsibly, because we do it with thought and care and purpose,” she said.
Healthcare applications require extensive scrutiny to protect patients and physicians, particularly when technology influences access to information or treatment decisions.
Gordon-Ring sees AI’s greatest potential in accelerating processes that directly benefit patients, including drug development, access to medical information and connections with healthcare providers.
That could mean reducing delays between identifying a medical need and obtaining an appointment, or making the treatment journey easier to navigate.
But speed shouldn’t come at the expense of accountability.
AI should help healthcare professionals and patients make better decisions, she said, “but never in the absence of, a human in the loop.”
That’s a useful distinction in an industry where the consequences of an algorithmic mistake can be considerably more serious than serving an advertisement for winter coats to someone vacationing in Miami.
Putting billions of data points to work
Omnicom Media Health is also using data and research to better understand when patients and physicians are most receptive to healthcare communications.
Gordon-Ring highlighted the importance of Acxiom, whose data resources give Omnicom access to 2.6 billion data points across patients and physicians, according to her remarks.
Those resources can help marketers identify relevant audiences and develop more informed communications strategies.
But data volume alone doesn’t guarantee a better understanding of the patient journey.
Gordon-Ring said proprietary research is essential for identifying how patient behavior, expectations and information needs are changing.
The objective is to combine multiple signals with research insights rather than relying on a static understanding of how people seek healthcare.
That approach could help advertisers deliver more useful information at moments when patients need it, while giving healthcare brands a better understanding of how to communicate responsibly.
After all, 2.6 billion data points might reveal a great deal about consumer behavior. They still can’t fully explain what someone feels while waiting for a biopsy result.
Patients will always be human
As AI assumes a larger role in media planning, buying and campaign activation, Gordon-Ring believes the healthcare advertising industry must preserve human judgment.
That includes questioning automated recommendations, maintaining accountability and ensuring that marketing decisions serve patients and physicians rather than merely satisfying performance metrics.
“Patients will always be human,” she said. “That will never change.”
Gordon-Ring emphasized that healthcare marketers have responsibilities to their clients, partners and themselves to maintain appropriate standards as technology evolves.
Human oversight, she argued, isn’t an obstacle to innovation. It’s a necessary safeguard that helps keep technological capabilities aligned with patients’ needs.
For an advertising industry racing to automate everything from audience selection to campaign optimization, that might sound almost quaint.
But healthcare marketing has a rather important advantage over many other advertising categories: Its ultimate purpose involves helping people navigate decisions that can profoundly affect their lives.
AI may eventually become extraordinarily good at predicting consumer behavior, processing medical information and optimizing advertising investments.
Understanding what it means to be frightened, hopeful or vulnerable is another matter.
And no matter how sophisticated the technology becomes, patients aren’t going to stop being human just because the media plan has been automated.
You’re watching “The Beet.TV Leadership Summit with Omnicom Media at Advertising Week 2026,” presented by Cuebiq, Databricks, Newton Research, Roku and Teads. For more videos from this summit, please visit this page.
Artificial intelligence promises to make healthcare advertising faster, smarter and more efficient. It might even help patients find the information and treatment they need before they’ve spent three hours arguing with an insurance company’s automated phone system.
But there’s a catch. Healthcare involves actual human beings, with all their anxieties, vulnerabilities and inconvenient refusal to behave like neatly categorized data points.
That’s why empathy and trust must remain central to healthcare marketing, even as AI transforms media planning and buying, according to Melissa Gordon-Ring, global president of Omnicom Media Health.
Speaking with David Kaplan, a contributor to Beet.TV, at the Beet.TV Leadership Summit with Omnicom Media during Advertising Week New York 2026, Gordon-Ring discussed how healthcare marketers can balance technological innovation with the responsibility of communicating with patients and physicians.
Her message was straightforward: Technology should make healthcare more human, not turn patients into another optimization exercise.
Empathy isn’t an optional feature
Healthcare advertisers are asking more of their media partners, including greater transparency, measurable results and flexibility as technology and consumer behavior evolve.
They’re also asking for something that doesn’t always appear in a media-buying contract: patience and understanding.
“We should always ask for patience and understanding,” Gordon-Ring said. “They should ask us for that, too.”
That mutual understanding becomes especially important when advertising involves sensitive health concerns rather than the relatively low-stakes business of persuading someone to buy another pair of sneakers.
Gordon-Ring said effective healthcare marketing requires understanding patients’ experiences and the needs of healthcare professionals, or HCPs, at different stages of treatment.
A newly diagnosed patient, for example, may have very different informational and emotional needs from someone who’s managed the same condition for decades.
Marketers can use ethically sourced data and behavioral signals to understand those differences, but technology alone can’t provide the necessary sensitivity.
“The empathy piece has to stay consistent, and that doesn’t change,” Gordon-Ring said.
She emphasized the importance of balancing technology’s ability to retrieve information quickly with genuine human understanding.
Otherwise, healthcare communications risk feeling artificial or disconnected from the people they’re supposed to help.
Trust is the new currency
Consumers have more choices than ever when seeking healthcare information, selecting physicians and deciding which brands deserve their attention.
They can consult doctors, search engines, AI platforms and an apparently inexhaustible supply of online personalities offering medical advice with varying degrees of credibility.
That abundance of options makes trust increasingly valuable, Gordon-Ring said.
“I think the role that media plays in building trust has never been more important,” she said.
The challenge for healthcare advertisers is demonstrating reliability through consistent, meaningful interactions rather than assuming that brand recognition automatically translates into credibility.
Gordon-Ring compared building trust to making deposits in a bank account. Brands that contribute something valuable every day will accumulate an advantage over competitors that fail to earn consumers’ confidence.
“Those that actually can put in the trust bank every day something meaningful, not like a penny, but like maybe a dime or a quarter, are going to be the ones that win, because I truly believe that trust is the new currency.”
It’s an interesting proposition for an advertising industry accustomed to measuring success in impressions, clicks and conversions.
Apparently, trust doesn’t come with a convenient cost-per-thousand rate.
Healthcare could teach AI some bedside manners
Gordon-Ring believes healthcare could become a model for responsible AI adoption across the advertising industry.
The reason is simple: Healthcare organizations can’t afford to treat accuracy, privacy and human oversight as optional considerations.
“I absolutely believe that health can be the industry that teaches the rest of them how to use AI responsibly, because we do it with thought and care and purpose,” she said.
Healthcare applications require extensive scrutiny to protect patients and physicians, particularly when technology influences access to information or treatment decisions.
Gordon-Ring sees AI’s greatest potential in accelerating processes that directly benefit patients, including drug development, access to medical information and connections with healthcare providers.
That could mean reducing delays between identifying a medical need and obtaining an appointment, or making the treatment journey easier to navigate.
But speed shouldn’t come at the expense of accountability.
AI should help healthcare professionals and patients make better decisions, she said, “but never in the absence of, a human in the loop.”
That’s a useful distinction in an industry where the consequences of an algorithmic mistake can be considerably more serious than serving an advertisement for winter coats to someone vacationing in Miami.
Putting billions of data points to work
Omnicom Media Health is also using data and research to better understand when patients and physicians are most receptive to healthcare communications.
Gordon-Ring highlighted the importance of Acxiom, whose data resources give Omnicom access to 2.6 billion data points across patients and physicians, according to her remarks.
Those resources can help marketers identify relevant audiences and develop more informed communications strategies.
But data volume alone doesn’t guarantee a better understanding of the patient journey.
Gordon-Ring said proprietary research is essential for identifying how patient behavior, expectations and information needs are changing.
The objective is to combine multiple signals with research insights rather than relying on a static understanding of how people seek healthcare.
That approach could help advertisers deliver more useful information at moments when patients need it, while giving healthcare brands a better understanding of how to communicate responsibly.
After all, 2.6 billion data points might reveal a great deal about consumer behavior. They still can’t fully explain what someone feels while waiting for a biopsy result.
Patients will always be human
As AI assumes a larger role in media planning, buying and campaign activation, Gordon-Ring believes the healthcare advertising industry must preserve human judgment.
That includes questioning automated recommendations, maintaining accountability and ensuring that marketing decisions serve patients and physicians rather than merely satisfying performance metrics.
“Patients will always be human,” she said. “That will never change.”
Gordon-Ring emphasized that healthcare marketers have responsibilities to their clients, partners and themselves to maintain appropriate standards as technology evolves.
Human oversight, she argued, isn’t an obstacle to innovation. It’s a necessary safeguard that helps keep technological capabilities aligned with patients’ needs.
For an advertising industry racing to automate everything from audience selection to campaign optimization, that might sound almost quaint.
But healthcare marketing has a rather important advantage over many other advertising categories: Its ultimate purpose involves helping people navigate decisions that can profoundly affect their lives.
AI may eventually become extraordinarily good at predicting consumer behavior, processing medical information and optimizing advertising investments.
Understanding what it means to be frightened, hopeful or vulnerable is another matter.
And no matter how sophisticated the technology becomes, patients aren’t going to stop being human just because the media plan has been automated.
You’re watching “The Beet.TV Leadership Summit with Omnicom Media at Advertising Week 2026,” presented by Cuebiq, Databricks, Newton Research, Roku and Teads. For more videos from this summit, please visit this page.
Series Videos
