• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, October 8, 2014

Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi on Wednesday announced it is working with Publicis Health Media (PHM), the media planning and buying agency within PHCG (Publicis Healthcare Communications Group), to bring programmatic advertising to the pharma, health and wellness vertical.

"eMarketer projects the health and pharmaceutical vertical will reach a digital ad spend of $1.61 billion in 2015, but programmatic adoption has been slow compared to other industries,” stated Doug Kofoid, president of global solutions at VivaKi. "We created our healthcare solution in partnership with Publicis Health Media to reach direct-to-consumer and Healthcare Professional audiences at scale and more accurately measure campaign performance.”

The health and pharma vertical may be slow in its adoption of programmatic advertising, but its participation has not be nonexistent. Precision Health Media -- now now known as PageScience -- last year launched a programmatic ad targeting technology for pharma marketers that didn’t rely on cookies.

At the time, a PageScience representative told Real-Time Daily that “pharma marketers have strict limitations on audience and cookie targeting. As programmatic relies heavily on cookies, it has been a largely ‘off-limits’ method of targeting for pharma marketers.”

VivaKi’s Audience on Demand will facilitate access to data, inventory and tech partners, per a release. VivaKi also notes that it will “adhere to advertiser-specific medical, legal and regulatory policies and preferences,” which were alluded to earlier, including “collecting first-party data through remarketing pixels; targeting strategies such as third-party data prospecting; and adhering to industry-specific inventory requirements (Blacklists & Whitelists).”

Matt McNally, president of Publicis Health Media, stated: “We constantly see new media products and offerings enter the space and find that most are not tailored to the health and wellness industry.”

According to a release, three clients will participate in the beta of VivaKi’s and Publicis Health Media’s new initiative, including AstraZeneca and Rodale Corporate Digital.

The effort on Publicis’ part to up the pharmaceutical industry’s adoption of programmatic substantiates a recent prognosis made by Forrester that “new categories of advertisers and publishers will embrace exchange-based trading.”