ANNUAL REPORT
2025 Health Marketing and Media Trends Report
Introduction
If you believe in astrology (hello, Pluto in Aquarius), or just regularly keep up with the news, one thing is clear: 2025 stands to be a highly transformative year. From new breakthroughs in technology to evolving views on power and a renewed focus on the greater good, the coming year promises to keep us on our toes.
Health marketing is no exception. The industry continues to innovate while also preparing for the onslaught of AI, navigating regulatory changes, and grappling with broad uncertainties.
From our perspective at PulsePoint, the past year was the year of coordinated experiences. The industry has made dramatic progress in delivering seamless experiences across channels as well as across touchpoints and stages in the customer journey. But there’s more work to be done.
As we turn the corner to 2025, what does the new year hold for our industry? To shed light on this question, PulsePoint interviewed brand marketers, agency executives, media strategists, traders, and technologists across the pharmaceutical marketing sector. Specifically, we wanted to understand where marketing priorities lie. This report compiles the perspectives of these industry-leading experts. Keep reading to discover what we’re all most excited about.
Topics Covered
Persistent Marketing Changes
- Overcrowded media
- Data and technology limitations
- Antiquated creative development processes
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New Marketing Approaches
- Emerging channels
- The power of new data
- Improved customer experiences
- HCP–DTC connectivity
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What The Future Holds
- Changing healthcare landscape
- Focus on data privacy
- AI-driven improvements
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Acknowledgments
PulsePoint would like to extend a special thank you to the founders, executives, marketers, physicians, and clinicians from the below organizations who participated in our report by sharing their insights and perspectives.
Persistent Marketing Changes
Despite the advances in data and technology that have revolutionized how precisely marketers can reach and engage their audiences, we learned of some persistent challenges marketers face in targeting, breaking through and driving real connections.
Persistent Marketing Changes
The Media
increasingly Cluttered Environments
The HCP marketing landscape is incredibly cluttered, with brands across pharma, med device, OTC, and increasingly other categories all competing for HCPs’ attention. Breaking through this noise in a distinct and impactful way is a persistent challenge. It is not simply about reaching the right customer but reaching that customer in precise moments when they are receptive, and the brand has relevancy. To do this successfully, brands must understand their customers’ unique needs, barriers, and behaviors, as well as the nuances of their decision journeys. With this understanding, marketers can orchestrate communication plans that connect with HCPs and deliver key messages that are optimally timed to drive behavior change.
Sandy Weag
EVP of Engagement Strategy & Communications Planning, CMI Media Group
Refragmentation of Video
One of the most interesting challenges we face in reaching consumers is the refragmentation of video viewing. The sheer volume of video content and the increasing number of delivery mechanisms mean consumers are spending more time with sight, sound, and motion than ever before. As marketers, we must figure out where they are viewing and how to plan, buy, target, and optimize across various video modalities.
Michael Deichmiller
VP of Client Engagement & Planning, Butler/Till
Balancing Awareness and Acquisition
Balancing the competing objectives of branding (awareness) and service line (acquisition) continues to be a challenge in where to place marketing resources to keep the health system top of mind among consumers, but also drive volumes for specific service lines that are revenue drivers. Programmatic can be a solution that allows for both awareness and service line messaging to be used especially if done in a sequential message approach.
Ann Bilyew
EVP, Health and President, Healthcare Solutions Group, WebMD/Internet Brands
Persistent Marketing Changes
Data and Technology
Unconnected Stakeholders
What is the most common call-to-action in pharma DTC advertising? “Talk to your doctor”—but it only scratches the surface. What happens next is critical. Is the doctor informed enough about up-to-date treatment options? Is the patient’s insurance ready to cover the prescribed treatment? Our healthcare ecosystem is intricate, with interconnected stakeholders: prescribing physicians, practice managers, nurses, pharmacists, patients, caregivers, and payers. A data and technology platform that seamlessly connects these stakeholders is what I would add into our toolkit. By addressing the ecosystem as a whole—not just its parts—we’d enable smoother interactions, better-informed decisions, and greater access to care for patients.
Gozde Dinc
Director of Strategic Partnerships, Media & Innovation, Genentech
After-the-fact Targeting Data
Our ultimate goal in pharmaceutical advertising should be not only to help patients who are actively treating a condition but to also reach them before they’re using pharmaceutical products. Early intervention is often critical in condition treatment but the majority of data sets available in our space focus on models of users who are already treating. We need to create new data sets that help us reach patients in the earliest stage of their journey.
Molly Farrell
SVP of Programmatic, CMI Media Group
Static Audiences
We’ve gotten really good at being very precise about the audiences we reach on the platform, and triggering the right messages based on where and when we reach them. But these audiences have been static: we define parameters and create targets that very closely match the criteria we want to meet. The challenge for us is that audiences and behaviors are dynamic. So we’re currently working on ways to enable our clients to design adaptive audiences, meaning that the audiences will continuously recalibrate based on real-time insights. With adaptive audiences, we’ll be able to provide more timely and relevant messaging, so this should improve all the important marketing metrics: AQ, cost efficiency, and importantly, brand impact.
Maria Simeone
VP of Marketing, PulsePoint
The Challenge of True DTC Omnichannel Tracking
True DTC omnichannel tracking continues to be a challenge. I feel that this is a challenge mainly due to the privacy regulations required but anonymized journey tracking across the marketing ecosystem would be a game changer for patient media in healthcare.
Michael Caruso
SVP of Biddable Media, SSCG Media Group
The Not-So-Undesired End of Cookies
Regardless of what happens with Google’s ownership of Chrome, the industry is going to have to prepare for an ecosystem where cookies have less value. Cookies were never a perfect identity solution with expiration and lack of confidence in identity. Several browsers removed these years ago leading to incomplete reach against audiences where cookies were the dominant identifier. Advertisers need to continue to test alternatives and publishers need to continue integration with alternatives as well. Ultimately, I think we’re going to end up with cleaner and safer data to reach our audiences.
Molly Farrell
SVP of Programmatic, CMI Media Group
Limitations due to Data Privacy
Platforms are implementing more and more privacy restrictions that have made it difficult for health-related messages to reach the right consumers and limits marketers’ ability to track effectiveness. Even when patients are reached, translating awareness into action and measuring media impact remains challenging due to limited cross-platform and cross-device tracking.
Lori Goldberg
CEO, Silverlight Digital
Ongoing Rare Disease Challenges
In the Rare Disease space, a huge challenge continues to be finding and reaching diagnosed patients with our messages when our brands' patient populations are around 0.01% of the targetable US population. It requires a lot of testing and learning to hone in on a targeting mix that will reduce waste and improve KPIs simultaneously, as patients we're reaching are at various stages of their journey to script.
Demi Morganstein
Associate Director of Programmatic, dentsu health
Persistent Marketing Changes
Creative Development
Complex Creative Approval Process
The 1:1 deterministic nature of HCP data has allowed us to understand HCP activity and serve messaging accordingly. While we’re able to create these personalized and tailored journeys, we’re often lacking for creatives that follow along with that journey. The complexity and length of creative approval in the healthcare industry makes it difficult for marketers to reach physicians with the right message despite all of the available data.
Molly Farrell
SVP of Programmatic, CMI Media Group
Contextually Irrelevant Creative
We need to be more innovative in how we reach HCPs. Our challenge today isn't the same as it was in the past: Reaching our target HCPs with great precision is possible now with programmatic. Today we can send messages that will actually reach HCPs, and engage them based on factors like time of day, placement (i.e., where is the doctor seeing the message), is it the right moment to display an ad, and how have they interacted with the brand previously. But brands are not unlocking this potential because of the difficulty with producing personalized and contextually relevant creative options at scale. Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) and creative waterfalls are the answer to this problem. Any brand that isn't leveraging these approaches to reach HCPs is already behind the eight ball.
Jordan Galbraith
SVP of Programmatic, Publicis Health Media
Persistent Marketing Changes
Spotlight
In discussing the marketing challenges that continue to occupy the industry, many of our experts highlighted the high potential of AI to address some of these issues, a sentiment corroborated widely by their peers. In research conducted with marketers worldwide in October 2024, Ascend2, a market research company, found that marketers plan to use AI to improve their personalization of content and creative, segmentation and targeting capabilities, and predictive analytics and insights.
Areas of Marketing Technology Stack Marketers Worldwide Are Planning to Enhance With AI Capabilities in the Next 12 Months, Oct 2024
% of respondents
Source: Ascend2, "The Future of Martech Stack 2025," Nov. 10, 2024
New Marketing Approaches
With so much innovation around us, Gozde Dinc’s words hold true: If you’re doing business the same way you did last year, you’re already falling behind. To understand how health marketers are staying ahead, we asked them what they were most excited about. Their responses focused on four key areas: exploring emerging channels, better leveraging the power of data, delivering enhanced customer experiences, and achieving stronger connectivity between HCP and DTC marketing.
New Marketing Approaches
Emerging Channels
Programmatic EHR
Programmatic EHR allows us to reach priority NPIs in an extremely relevant environment as decisions are being made about patient treatments in real time. EHR partners expanding into the programmatic space means we can complement direct buys and drive incremental reach, which will encourage additional script writing behavior.
Demi Morganstein
Associate Director of Programmatic, dentsu health
Programmatic Telehealth Inventory
It would be great to see Telehealth ad inventory become available via programmatic. While not as widely used compared to the pandemic, it’s still leveraged. A recent report from Doximity showed 77% of HCPs use telemedicine weekly.
Rose Sumrall
Senior Director of Programmatic & Social Media, Underscore Marketing
Endemic Environments
We as an industry always talk about "blue jean moments" and making sure we serve physicians with ads in consumer environments, but I feel that reaching an HCP with relevant messaging in endemic settings is as important as ever before. The pharmaceutical landscape is highly competitive, and HCPs are constantly vocalizing how difficult it can be to stay up to date on the latest treatments. This gives us an opportunity to make sure physicians are being served ads in office settings and as they are researching conditions, i.e., at points closest to filling a script.
Francis D'Hondt
SVP of Addressable Health, KINESSO
Podcasts
Podcasts remain a key area of exploration in our HCP marketing strategy due to their highly engaged audiences. They present a largely untapped opportunity to deliver value-driven content directly to HCPs in a convenient and personal format. Beyond HCP education, we have also been exploring podcasts as a bridge between DTC and HCP marketing campaigns, connecting messaging across both audiences to foster treatment conversations. The rise of video-integrated podcasts also provides exciting synergies with the success we've seen in "professionals-as-consumers" video campaigns.
Nicole Hamlin
Group Director of Integrated Planning, Butler/Till
Text Messaging
For 2025, we are exploring direct engagement through text messaging and platforms that facilitate real-time opt-in communication with HCPs. This approach allows brands to send actionable content—like clinical updates or patient resources—directly to an HCP’s mobile device, creating a personal, immediate touchpoint that drives timely engagement with minimal disruption.
Lori Goldberg
CEO, Silverlight
Gaming
Gaming is a channel I feel will grow tremendously over the next few years across the Pharma and Healthcare industry. Its market share to relevant patient audiences is enormous and there are a number of highly interactive formats that can be utilized to keep brand resonance in creative ways.
Michael Caruso
SVP of Biddable Media, SSCG Media Group
Beyond the Doctor’s Office
Opportunities to reach patients and caregivers where they seek and receive care, outside of traditional doctor’s offices, are becoming increasingly important. A growing population of patients today no longer have primary care physicians that they see consistently, but rather rely on urgent care, in-pharmacy, and community-based care facilities. As a result, we are seeing brands investing more in point-of-care tactics that go beyond traditional in-office opportunities. This includes a growing interest in retail opportunities, even for Rx brands, who historically did not recognize the potential value of being in-pharmacy or other retail environments.
Sandy Weag
EVP of Engagement Strategy & Communications Planning, CMI Media Group
Retail Media Networks
I’d like to see the industry maintain its momentum by investing in trends like AI, attention measurement, and retail media network partnerships that are piquing the interest of clients across other verticals. I think RMNs are especially interesting given how robust and unique retail data sets are, as well as the fact that multiple pharma advertisers have explored OTC approval for some of their medications.
Francis D'Hondt
SVP of Addressable Health, KINESSO
Expansion of Current Strategies
For HCP Marketing, we’re exploring a few things. Expansion to larger care teams to provide early awareness to those who may be referring to specialists for specific conditions. Leveraging OLV and CTV formats to a larger degree with tailored creative to resonate with medical professionals. Expansion of paid social formats, inclusive of more influencer style DOL efforts as well as thought leadership initiatives.
Michael Caruso
SVP of Biddable Media, SSCG Media Group
New Marketing Approaches
The Power of New Data
Real-Time Signals
Clients tend to only update their Target Lists 1x/year, so it's important to ensure we supplement standard targeting with relevant audiences. PulsePoint SmartLists allow us to pull in various near real-time signals (contextual, clinical, behavioral) to target priority NPIs who've taken key actions. The ability to manipulate the lists and control recency of the signals is huge—and ensures we're reaching each NPI at the right time.
Demi Morganstein
Associate Director of Programmatic, dentsu health
Unconventional Data Enhancements
I’m particularly energized by partnerships centered on privacy-first and ID-less programmatic targeting, as well as the potential of platforms like Pinterest and Nextdoor. Tapping into unconventional data sources—such as wastewater analysis, weather trends, and even food ordering habits—can uncover hidden signals that reshape how we approach media strategies. Social platforms are also evolving into search engines, making search ads within these spaces a game-changing opportunity. We should keep in mind however, as the number of channels grows, so does the risk of fragmentation. Innovating how we connect these touchpoints into cohesive, seamless experiences is a critical opportunity ahead of us marketers.
Gozde Dinc
Director of Strategic Partnerships, Media & Innovation, Genentech
Real-time Decisioning
In the constant change our clients operate in, some things do not change: High quality data and signals remain foundational to inform and support the marketer's decision making. They remain critically important to deepen our clients' understanding of which moments are most critical and in which moments their target audience is most receptive to their marketing message. What mindset is the HCP exhibiting in a given moment: clinical decision making, knowledge building, etc.? The impact of LLMs is only as good as the data sets that they are being trained on. Real-time decisioning across channels and environments, determining which creative is likely to resonate with their target audiences, all these campaign optimization decisions rely on a high quality data foundation.
Konrad Gerszke
EVP, Growth Platforms and Markets, Internet Brands
Real-time Performance Measurement
Innovation has often been hard to quickly adopt in the pharma space because of the lag in performance stats beyond front-end media metrics. The ability to optimize to actual campaign metrics that matter (e.g., AQ) and see performance breakdowns on much less of a lag than before means we can more quickly understand how different tactics/partners are performing and cut down on inefficient media spend, which in turn leads to more available spend for further innovation and testing opportunities.
It's especially exciting to see the increase in measurement integrations across a lot of our partners, as it gives us multiple lenses through which to analyze and understand campaign performance. Whether it’s curated pre-scored inventory (against AQ) from a publisher/data partner or an integration with partners specializing in attention or sustainability measurement, there are more options than ever before to gauge performance of HCP and DTC campaigns.
It's especially exciting to see the increase in measurement integrations across a lot of our partners, as it gives us multiple lenses through which to analyze and understand campaign performance. Whether it’s curated pre-scored inventory (against AQ) from a publisher/data partner or an integration with partners specializing in attention or sustainability measurement, there are more options than ever before to gauge performance of HCP and DTC campaigns.
Francis D'Hondt
SVP of Addressable Health, KINESSO
Speed of Omnichannel Analytics
I’m really excited about the work we’re doing at Underscore to evolve our existing HCP data aggregation and insight engine in order to improve the speed and value of omnichannel analytics. We’re using pre-trained AI and machine learning models to identify factors that can increase promotional impact for brands and support longer-term decision-making needs.
Jay de la Cruz
SVP, Media, Underscore
Transparency Across Identity Resolution Providers
The audience data selection process is going to take a strategic approach similar to how we identify endemic or lifestyle partners and understand total campaign reach and effectiveness. There are so many data patterns and audiences to choose from, so it's about being strategic with which ones are most effective, and eliminating waste. Having greater transparency and ownership in identity resolution will allow us to manage that more precisely across all digital (web, advanced TV, etc.) and addressable tactics.
Jason Patterson
Chief Analytics Officer, Publicis Health Media
Data Interoperability
We are supporting healthcare systems with interoperability, enabling them to cost-effectively engage in targeted and personalized ways across the health journey, driving growth and loyalty. We are making investments to unlock the full potential of their EHR, martech, BI, and CRM systems by making it easy to leverage our insights, content, and activation capabilities in any system. In 2025, we will enable bi-directional data-exchange between Ignite Growth Platform (IGP) and their proprietary systems.
Ann Bilyew
EVP, Health and President, Healthcare Solutions Group, WebMD/Internet Brands
New Marketing Approaches
Spotlight
Real-time performance measurement for immediate campaign optimization has long been a priority for pharma marketers. So it’s no surprise that its availability has generated significant excitement across both HCP and DTC marketers. Those already leveraging these capabilities are highly optimistic about the results and impact they’re achieving.
Case Study: Dentsu Health Delivers Reach with Unprecedented Audience Quality
As the agency of record for a Parkinson’s disease brand, Dentsu Health needed to reach the right consumers with their message while improving qualified audience reach (QAR), cost efficiency, and brand conversion. Using PulsePoint’s omnichannel health marketing platform, Dentsu was able to find their target audience and generate more engagement, all while decreasing campaign costs and increasing brand conversions.
Read the full case study here.
New Marketing Approaches
Improved Customer Experiences
Personalized Engagement Across the Customer Journey
HCPs get about nine touchpoints with the pharma industry per day. For higher value targeted HCPs, this can increase over 2x. Frankly, we must do better as an entire industry. How we engage the right customer, at the right time, with the right content, through the right channels can distinguish our interactions from the crowd. Leveraging the vast amount of data we now have available at our disposal and using AI models to analyze and generate smart next best action recommendations, we can now build a hyper-personalized customer engagement. This strategy isn’t about isolated tactics—it’s about covering the entire HCP journey from personal to non-personal channels, and from their "white coat" professional moments to their "blue jeans" personal ones.
Gozde Dinc
Director of Strategic Partnerships, Media & Innovation, Genentech
Cross Media Experiences
The ability, through technology, to automate and orchestrate across channels is going to continue to drive marketing forward through the potential for more sophisticated precision and personalization. Brands can engage with their customers uniquely based on their individual needs and behaviors, and these engagements can now be orchestrated across nearly all marketing channels. When we connect the experiences of a customer across all the media they engage with, we allow brands to build relationships and create trust, which ultimately drives better impact.
Sandy Weag
EVP of Engagement Strategy & Communications Planning, CMI Media Group
Needs-Based Targeting
Today, every doctor turns to digital tools and clinical reference content to facilitate their daily workflow and make the best decisions for their patients. Our ability to meet that timely need has dramatically improved with the development of AI-based experiences and tools. We’re able to compile a more comprehensive view of the daily considerations and decision points of the doctor, which translates to an understanding of when the doctor is most receptive to a brand message and when it is most critical to communicate. With this, we can deliver smarter targeting and better outcomes for the brand and the patient.
Dan Johnson
Senior Vice President, Medscape
Better Responsiveness to Customer Behavior
While patient adoption can take time in a lot of cases, we're excited about the ability to move patients through their journey much faster with the advancement of technology and better access to data. Through our machine learning and AI infrastructures we are excited to identify more low hanging fruit opportunities to drive our clients’ business much faster than we have before. These technologies allow us to predict in real time which markets’, HCPs’, patients’, etc., behaviors are changing, so we can be more agile in shifting investments. This, in addition to the flexibility we now have with advanced TV investments, will help us stay ahead and influence decisions now vs. mid campaign or after.
Jason Patterson
Chief Analytics Officer, Publicis Health Media
Authentic Creative
Pharma’s traditional DTC marketing relies heavily on linear TV ads featuring predictable storytelling—a happy couple, a feel-good soundtrack. While these may have been effective in its time, this model has oversaturated the space, numbing consumer interest. It’s about time we modernize the way we do DTC marketing. Capturing today’s consumer requires fast-paced, authentic creative that hooks attention in the first five seconds and follows the audience, not the inventory. Audience-first, connected strategies across streaming TV, social media, and digital audio enable us to engage consumers wherever they are. These smarter, more dynamic approaches empower individuals to take control of their health in ways that resonate with how they consume content today everywhere else.
Gozde Dinc
Director of Strategic Partnerships, Media & Innovation, Genentech
Sensitivity to Human Realities
Professional and patient marketing has largely focused on 'who' should be reached. That's a good start, but not good enough. Depending on the situations that a doctor incurs each day, a given treatment option is more or less relevant. And, for patients, we all have an innate understanding that there are times where a person wants to lean in—to her condition, its management, its treatment—and times where she wants to focus on the rest of her life. Receptivity is fluid and momentary for professionals and patients. We can now reflect this human reality in how we execute campaigns, by using new AI-based capabilities to adapt campaign execution based on an individual understanding of receptivity moment-by-moment.
Parker Noren
SVP of Growth & Product Strategy, Internet Brands
DEI in the Consumer Space
There is a lot of opportunity to more intentionally explore DEI within the consumer space. DEI is so important in pharma because different communities may have different experiences with health conditions or even healthcare as an entity, but our activations do not always reflect this. A more pointed approach to recognizing that communities respond differently to medications and designing relevant messaging is imperative to fueling more successful treatments and trust among a diverse consumer base.
Francis D'Hondt
SVP of Addressable Health, KINESSO
AI-Powered Heath Assistants
We’ve recently expanded into offering closed AI-powered digital health assistants to improve understanding and engagement through two-way, interactive technology. Offering a private and welcoming environment for users to ask questions and hear their care team’s answers, it's proved effective for a number of use cases, including reinforcing a care plan following a diagnosis, providing information before or after a procedure (or following a hospital discharge), and a reduction of in-person appointments, nurse line calls, and no shows/cancellations.
Ann Bilyew
EVP, Health and President, Healthcare Solutions Group, WebMD/Internet Brands
New Marketing Approaches
HCP-DTC Connectivity
A Multi-Pronged Approach
We are currently connecting our HCP and DTC channels in a few ways by triangulating models using ICD10 codes, target list NPIs, and geofencing. Connecting the campaigns has driven a positive impact on engagement metrics, as doubling the signals used to build audiences narrows in on the most relevant patients.
WISH LIST: Targeting Ahead of the Visit
It would be awesome if we could target HCPs who have a relevant patient visit coming up (in a HIPAA compliant way, of course), as I'm always looking for ways to reduce waste. While all Target List NPIs are important, it would be optimal to prioritize reach based on the types of patients they're seeing in the next few weeks, for example.
It would be awesome if we could target HCPs who have a relevant patient visit coming up (in a HIPAA compliant way, of course), as I'm always looking for ways to reduce waste. While all Target List NPIs are important, it would be optimal to prioritize reach based on the types of patients they're seeing in the next few weeks, for example.
Demi Morganstein
Associate Director of Programmatic, dentsu health
Shared Media and Messaging
We are continuing to think about ways to reach HCPs with consumer messaging, and in consumer moments, to unlock script lift. Most prominently, we have expanded our advanced TV efforts against healthcare professional audiences—a strategy that has exceeded expectations in driving script volume and return on ad spend.
Nicole Hamlin
Group Director of Integrated Planning, Butler/Till
Cross-Over Creative
Healthcare professionals (HCPs) are consumers too, so reaching them through consumer-oriented channels can be a strategic component of a comprehensive campaign. Recently, we've seen strong results in the video space by targeting HCPs with consumer messaging and measuring the impact on key brand health indicators. This approach helps us understand how such exposure influences HCP perceptions and behaviors. By pairing these innovative channels with traditional ones, we can increase the frequency of our interactions with HCPs.
Michael Deichmiller
VP of Client Engagement & Planning, Butler/Till
EHR as Connector
With programmatic EHR becoming of greater interest to Healthcare marketers, a next evolution I’d like to see within this technology is the ability to target the patient of a relevant HCP while they are checking in for their appointment to see their doctor and then timing the delivery of a message to their HCP during this appointment to encourage awareness and consideration among both the doctor and patient being seen by said doctor.
Rose Sumrall
Senior Director of Programmatic & Social Media, Underscore Marketing
Cross-Audience Measurement and Optimization
Connecting HCP and DTC marketing channels remains one of our biggest strategic focus points and we have to be dialed in multiple ways from a KPI standpoint. In this case 1 + 1 does not equal 2. We have one doctor, one patient, and only ONE conversion. Not only are we optimizing by channel/publisher/tactic but we are making ongoing budgeting decisions for each audience and not afraid to shift investment from one to another. It's about identifying signals in the market for both audiences that we know can influence the complete patient/doctor conversation.
Jason Patterson
Chief Analytics Officer, Publicis Health Media
What The Future Holds
There are about six broad forces that drive the direction of healthcare in the US. These include policy and regulations, cost and price pressures, consumer expectations and behavior, technology advances, prevalence of disease, and the structure of the market. Looking out into 2025, all of these forces are in a state of change. What, then, will the future hold for our industry?
Changing Healthcare Landscape
Under the new administration, I expect the wave of consumer-driven health brands to continue growing as the regulatory environment and overall sentiment toward other parts of the healthcare ecosystem erode. This shift will likely lead to the emergence of new health-based organizations, increasing competition and ultimately providing better health products for consumers and patients. Additionally, I anticipate that mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity in the healthcare space will rise over the next 12-24 months. This increased activity could drive innovation and efficiency, further transforming the health marketing landscape.
Michael Deichmiller
VP of Client Engagement & Planning, Butler/Till
Shifting Payor Dynamics
Under a second Trump administration, health marketing is expected to shift in response to regulatory changes, cost pressures, and a greater emphasis on price transparency and consumer-driven healthcare. The administration is likely to push for Medicaid funding caps, ACA subsidy rollbacks, and expanded use of Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements (ICHRAs), which could alter the payer landscape and increase competition in the individual insurance market. Additionally, greater emphasis on home-based care and AI-driven efficiencies may create new opportunities for digital health engagement, while Medicare cost controls, including extended insulin caps, could impact pharma marketing strategies. With an expected push toward industry-led AI governance, digital marketers in healthcare will have more flexibility but must navigate evolving compliance concerns.
Ann Bilyew
EVP, Health and President, Healthcare Solutions Group, WebMD/Internet Brands
Greater Focus on Data Privacy
Data privacy has seemingly always been an area of great influence within healthcare marketing, and I expect it to only increase in terms of importance in 2025. We’ve started to see numerous state-specific data privacy laws pop up in the past year (most notably My Health My Data in Washington at the end of March), and it seems the industry is starting to really feel the impact as we head into the new year. Nearly half of the states in the United States now have some version of a consumer data privacy law, more research is being released analyzing these laws and the incoming administration has already spoken up in favor of more consumer protection. Add all of these factors together and I would expect data privacy to be a topic that’s at the top of all of our minds for much of 2025. It will be more necessary than ever to understand how partners are collecting and using consumer data, and to bring diversified media plans to market in order to minimize the impact of these changes while maintaining compliance and performance standards.
Francis D'Hondt
SVP of Addressable Health, KINESSO
Privacy-First Patient Connections
Local state legislation on data privacy is going to have a great influence on our ability to connect with patients in meaningful ways and eliminate waste. For us, it's not about finding loopholes but being respectful and smarter on how we continue to get important information to these patients to support their healthcare decisions.
Jason Patterson
Chief Analytics Officer, Publicis Health Media
AI-Driven Operational Excellence
Advanced AI models are already being built to enable sophisticated, triggered communications tailored to key audiences—leveraging insights from client and third-party data to determine most effective next action. Looking forward, we should see increased focus on pointing AI's impact toward streamlining creative production and regulatory approval. Using AI-powered tools to simplify compliance workflows will address a long-standing bottleneck in campaign delivery and effectiveness.
Nicole Hamlin
Group Director of Integrated Planning, Butler/Till
Stronger Storytelling
By handling repetitive tasks, optimizing media placement, and facilitating scalable, modular content delivery, AI will empower creative teams to focus on storytelling, strategy, and innovation, ultimately making healthcare marketing more efficient, targeted, and impactful.
Michael Caruso
SVP of Biddable Media, SSCG Media Group
New Marketing Approaches
Spotlight
When thinking about the future of pharma marketing, many of our experts adopted a pragmatic approach to finding solutions while maintaining confidence in the face of macro industry changes. This positive outlook extends beyond marketing to the broader life sciences sector.
According to the 2025 Life Sciences Outlook report from the Deloitte US Center for Health Solutions, there’s good news ahead. The vast majority (75%) of global life sciences executives reported being optimistic about the upcoming year. These executives are focused on enhancing digital capabilities, adapting to changing customer expectations and creating value through R&D and portfolio strategies amid growing competitive pressure, business volatility, and changing customer needs.
What Life Sciences Executives Expect in 2025
Life Sciences performance outlook 2025
0
%
Executives with a positive to cautiously positive industry outlook
0
%
Executives who expect an increase in operating revenue
0
%
Executives who predict increased operating margin
Overarching life sciences sector themes for 2025
Digital transformation fuels change
R&D and portfolio strategies help mitigate competitive pressures
Firms are preparing for business volatility with resilient strategies
Changing customer expectations shape organizations' strategies
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