Digital marketing worked. Now pharma must reorganise around it

Remember when I said that patients are coming to doctors with formed opinions – if they come to physicians at all? Well, here's proof that should make every pharmaceutical marketer celebrate and every C-suite executive mobilise.

According to new research from Cadent, pharmaceutical advertising has reached a tipping point where TV (e.g., broadcast and cable) and connected TV ads (e.g., streaming) are nipping at the heels of physicians as patients’ primary source of medication awareness. Even more striking: 73% of patients say they're likely to ask a doctor about a prescription drug after seeing a mobile ad, and nearly two-thirds will click an ad to get more information.

This is what we call a tipping point. After more than a decade of digital transformation, pharmaceutical marketing is on the cusp of achieving what the industry has always wanted: informed, motivated patients who engage in their healthcare decisions and push for treatments that change lives. This is fantastic! We've changed patients' expectations. Now we need to deliver.

And, of course, just as the data shows patients want a fuller, more informed experience from pharma, US Senators Bernie Sanders and Angus King have introduced legislation to ban direct-to-consumer advertising entirely.

Now that pharma's investments in digital marketing have changed patient expectations, the question is whether your company will reorganise to meet this moment while you still can.

Digital marketing investment actually worked

For decades, pharmaceutical marketing operated on a simple premise: create awareness, drive patients to physicians, let the science close the sale. That model assumed physicians controlled the narrative and patients arrived with questions, not conclusions.

The Cadent data reveals a fundamentally different reality. When 90% or more of consumer audiences use digital devices for healthcare services, and researching health conditions is their most common use case, patients aren't asking their doctors for information. They're coming prepared with insights, questions, and treatment preferences.

This shift reveals something important about innovation inside pharmaceutical companies. The parts of these companies that drove this patient experience transformation over the last decade – digital marketing teams, omnichannel specialists, patient engagement experts – have been remarkably successful. They've given patients a taste of what patient-focused pharmaceutical engagement looks like, and patients love it.

This moment didn't happen overnight. It's the culmination of a digital transformation that began accelerating around 2018, when pharmaceutical companies started treating digital marketing as strategic investment, rather than experimental spend. According to eMarketer, US pharmaceutical digital ad spending will grow from approximately $15 billion in 2022 to a projected $24.7 billion by 2026. That growth represents a fundamental shift in how the industry goes to market.

Through this, patients have come to expect engagement, not marketing. They want information, not interruption. They want to pull insights when they need them, not have messages pushed when companies need to hit quarterly targets.

Cadent’s findings align with these trends. Across all demographics, 73% of patients value receiving educational information from pharmaceutical companies about health conditions and 69% want pharmaceutical companies to provide educational support throughout their patient journey. According to 2024 research from MAGNA and DeepIntent, 63% of patients report learning about new medications through pharma ads, with this figure consistent across all generations, including 61% of Gen Z.

But this success has created natural tension within pharmaceutical organisations. The innovative parts that changed patient expectations are now pressuring the more traditional parts of the business to catch up. It's the classic challenge of transformation: early success creates demand for systematic change.

This creates operational challenges that most pharmaceutical companies aren't designed to solve. Medical Affairs owns education, but doesn't control advertising. Commercial owns advertising, but can't coordinate with medical affairs on patient education strategies. IT owns personalisation, but struggles with platform integrations, fragmented data landscape, and compliance constraints. This is the fundamental challenge that pharmaceutical companies now need to solve to meet this moment.

The regulatory threat to proven success

Here's the urgency: just as pharmaceutical companies have proven that patient-focused marketing serves to educate, inform, and empower patients, some in Congress want to eliminate it entirely.

The Sanders-King legislation introduced in June would ban all direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising. The timing couldn't be more ironic. After decades of industry evolution toward educationally-focused, patient-empowering marketing, lawmakers want to revert to a model that will tie the industry's hands behind its back and disenfranchise patients.

Consider the implications: in a healthcare system where one in three Americans lacks a primary care physician, eliminating direct patient marketing would create an information vacuum. The Cadent research shows that 55% of patients credit pharmaceutical advertising with helping them discover new health conditions, with 62% stating they would have missed learning about conditions affecting them without these ads.

While the bill would preserve non-promotional educational content from Medical Affairs teams, it would eliminate the promotional channels that have proven most effective at reaching patients when and where they make healthcare decisions.

Instead of trying to protect patients from marketing, Congress should work to ensure patients have access to health information that helps them advocate for themselves in clinical conversations.

The organisational transformation imperative

This signals a rallying cry for accelerating investment in go-to-market models that are already working.

For the Commercial and Medical leaders who drove this change: You proved that patient-centred engagement works. Bravo! Now, prove that pharmaceutical organisations can evolve to match. Your next innovation challenge isn't digital, it's organisational. Design the cross-functional, patient-first company that can fully deliver on the promise you've already validated in the market.

For Boards of Directors and the C-Suite: This is your moment to fundamentally reorganise your pharma company to deliver on the promise that your most innovative teams have proven works. The natural tension between the parts of your organisation that are driving this patient experience success and the traditional structures holding you back is a signal. Reorganise go-to-market operations around the patient-first approach that the market demands.

For industry advocates: Defend your members companies’ right to continue this proven approach. While the Sanders-King bill is unlikely to pass, help lawmakers understand that the data demonstrates patient-centred pharmaceutical engagement represents healthcare progress, not exploitation. The innovation your industry has achieved in patient empowerment deserves protection, not prohibition.

The disconnect between innovative digital engagement teams and traditional pharmaceutical structures isn't a problem – it’s the signal that organisational transformation is required. The companies that reorganise around patient-centred models will build competitive advantages that transcend regulatory threats. The question is whether your organisation will evolve while you still have the opportunity.

About the author

Tom Barry is the founder of Signal + Pattern, an independent advisory practice helping biopharmaceutical companies and their strategic partners rethink go-to-market strategy and accelerate digital innovation. He brings more than a decade of healthcare and life sciences experience, including five years leading enterprise digital transformation at Takeda. Through Signal + Pattern, Barry now advises both biopharma organisations and the SaaS providers, consulting firms, and creative agencies that serve them on navigating the complexity of commercialisation with strategies rooted in human-centred design, data-driven storytelling, and practical operational change. Recent work includes repositioning SaaS platforms for life sciences growth and guiding global teams through next-best-action and field force transformation initiatives.