• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, December 16, 2024

WebMD Ignite -- an arm of WebMD that supports health care advertisers and marketers -- has designed a suite of advertising capabilities that the company said reduces ad waste by finding and targeting ads to specific audiences. 

It's all designed to get to "zero waste" in campaigns and drive the highest engagement levels to improve return on investments (ROI), says Ann Bilyew, executive vice president at WebMD Ignite.

“It’s not just tools, platforms and audiences,” she says. “It’s a fully managed service with expertise to optimize these campaigns” within the healthcare industry.

The channels include digital outdoor, steaming audio, connected TV, and many more.

The suite, Ignite Programmatic, uses a lot of intent data -- data such as healt-care content and engagement insights from some of the most visited health-related websites.

It also relies on a set of tools to precisely reach audiences. The company has been testing the platform for a little more than a year.

The company has about 14,000 “health care condition models” that it uses. It took time to build and test the program and models within its healthcare-specific demand-side platform (DSP) to provide better results than just audience-engagement models. 

Reporting helps health-care advertisers identify the programmatic channels, such as Google search ads, through which the advertiser connects with the consumer. It also can identify the number of “touches” that resulted in a connection and the return on investment the ad yielded.

Ignite Programmatic can help health-care marketers reach more than 98% of U.S. healthcare consumers and 3.2 million health-care providers.

The official launch includes what the company believes is a first for the industry -- a brand-awareness audience model called Ignite High Value Care Seeker.

The model predicts and identifies individuals who need a specific type of care, such as orthopedic care, and will likely spend a higher amount with health-care professionals within the next 18 months.

Google does something similar when serving ads.

WebMD Ignite’s platform does this by using pseudonymous demographic and geographic data drawn from billions of de-identified patient encounters and claims data -- all within health-care industry guidelines that support privacy and regulatory regulations required to keep consumers safe. 

Health-care organizations spend tens of billions of dollars annually on digital advertising, but reaching the correct audiences that adhere to strict privacy laws has created significant challenges that can lead to wasteful spending.

Ignite Programmatic uses pseudonymous first-party data insights through advanced audience modeling, demand-side platforms (DSP), and premium publisher and marketplace partnerships.

These data sources enable Ignite Programmatic to reach more than 98% of U.S. health-focused consumers and 3.2 million health-care professionals to provide the greatest visibility into health audience behaviors and insights.

Consumers targeted through Ignite Programmatic are more likely to have an interest in any given healthcare matter compared with a geotargeted demographic audience in the same market.

This is how the technology reduces audience waste by approximately 25%.