Pharma's quantum leap: How AI is redefining media measurement in a zero-click world
The pharmaceutical media landscape has transcended mere complexity; it is in the throes of a profound phase transition. Our traditional measurement frameworks, built for a world that was once linear, are now faltering under the immense weight of entangled behaviours: the nuanced clinical decisions of HCPs, the deeply personal emotional journeys of patients, the often-unseen influence of caregivers, and the quiet revolution of medical affairs discourse. These elements are no longer isolated channels, but a continuously evolving lattice of decisions and interactions.
As the "zero-click" era, fuelled by generative AI, reshapes how intent is formed and information is consumed, the critical need for a new analytical paradigm is not just emerging – it is here. Welcome to the era where the convergence of quantum computing and artificial intelligence isn't just an advantage, it's the imperative for understanding what's truly possible.
Quantum x AI: Rethinking the boundaries of pharma media measurement
Pharma media measurement is reaching a moment of profound transformation, one that resembles less an incremental progression and more a quiet, structural shift. The complexity of our ecosystem has been expanding faster than our analytical capacity, and the traditional tools of our discipline are straining under the weight of entangled behaviours: the clinical decisions of HCPs, the emotional journeys of patients, the silent influence of caregivers, and the subtle intellectual rigour of medical affairs discourse. They weave together in ways we can no longer study as independent channels or isolated funnels. They form something closer to a living system, a continuously evolving lattice of decisions, signals, perceptions, sentiments, and informational interactions.
As this complexity deepens, a simple truth emerges: classical measurement frameworks cannot keep pace with a system that is no longer linear, nor even merely non-linear, but fundamentally interdependent. Pharma’s media environment has become a quantum landscape long before we acquired quantum tools to study it.
In the past decade, we have observed HCPs navigate walled gardens while patients drift toward conversational search journeys that bypass websites altogether. Caregivers, whose voices are seldom modelled explicitly, increasingly drive clinical inquiries and digital research. Medical affairs engagements ripple through scientific networks with momentum that is difficult to quantify. Creative messages proliferate into thousands of variants, each carrying micro-differences in tone, imagery, scientific language, or regulatory framing. And generative AI has quietly rewritten the rules of discovery, collapsing entire search journeys into a single moment of inquiry – what we now call the “zero-click” world.
To understand such a system, the industry requires a new class of tool; ones capable not only of interpreting what happened, but of sensing the underlying structure of possibility itself. This is where the convergence of quantum computing and artificial intelligence begins to reveal its promise.
Quantum computing excels in domains where classical methods falter: highly entangled variables, multidimensional decision graphs, non-linear interactions, and combinatorial explosions of scale. In many ways, quantum algorithms mirror the true nature of pharmaceutical media ecosystems far more faithfully than classical models ever could. Quantum systems evaluate not one path, but many potential paths simultaneously. They explore relationships that humans may never think to test. They reveal hidden structures: subtle resonances between creative expression and clinical behaviour, or between “zero-click” conversational intent and prescription decisions that evade even the most carefully designed MMM or MTA model.
Importantly, this is not a distant theoretical ambition. Today’s quantum platforms already allow measurement scientists and optimisation researchers to begin experimenting in ways that were impossible even a few years ago. Quantum annealing systems such as D-Wave enable large-scale optimisation, often with thousands of simultaneous variables, ideal for media allocation, creative sequencing, and cross-portfolio optimisation. Gate-based systems, including IBM Quantum, Google’s Sycamore architecture, Microsoft’s Azure Quantum environment, AWS Braket’s multi-backend integration, and the high-fidelity trapped-ion systems of Quantinuum, offer infrastructures robust enough to simulate complex funnel dynamics, creative embeddings, and cross-audience influence patterns with an unprecedented level of nuance.
In this environment, the boundaries between audiences, channels, and outcomes have blurred, demanding measurement systems that are as adaptive and multidimensional as the behaviours they seek to understand. This means rethinking foundational assumptions, not only about causality and attribution, but about what constitutes actionable insight in a world shaped by quantum possibility and AI-driven interpretation. The new paradigm asks us to move beyond static metrics and embrace dynamic models that can learn, evolve, and respond in real time to emergent patterns across the pharma media landscape.
Quantum provides the ability to explore, but exploration alone does not produce understanding
This is where artificial intelligence, particularly large language models, enters the measurement equation. AI becomes the interpretive layer: the system that takes the immense solution space illuminated by quantum exploration and translates it into meaning. LLMs serve as reasoning engines capable of turning unstructured signals into coherent narratives, recognising patterns in “zero-click” search behaviour, digesting caregiver sentiment, translating scientific engagement into clinical confidence pathways, and evaluating creative resonance through embedding architectures. AI turns quantum insights into strategy, into creative recommendations, into a clear understanding of how multi-audience interactions shape treatment initiation and adherence.
In this combined architecture, quantum and AI form a natural duality. Quantum systems examine what is possible. While AI interprets what is meaningful. Together, they offer a new measurement paradigm capable of capturing not only what people do, but why they do it, and how different audience groups influence one another within a single connected ecosystem.
Perhaps the most profound shift will occur in how we understand creative expression. For years, measurement has been built around channels: how much exposure each touchpoint delivered, and with what apparent effect. But the industry is gradually awakening to a deeper truth: creative is the true currency of persuasion, and creative signals must be treated not as superficial artifacts, but as measurable vectors. A creative asset is not a picture or a message; it is a structured bundle of cognitive, emotional, and scientific signals. AI can represent these signals through embeddings. Quantum computing can explore their optimal combinations. The result is a future where creative-aware measurement displaces channel-first attribution, giving rise to models that understand not only which touchpoints matter, but which ideas move people toward care.
The emergence of “zero-click” behaviour amplifies this urgency. In a world where a patient can ask a generative AI model a medical question and make a decision without ever clicking anything, the traditional clickstream becomes a ghost. Yet, decisions still change. Intent still forms. Clinical conversations still shift. Measurement must therefore evolve beyond what is visible and learn to infer latent journeys, the silent cognitive steps between question and choice. Only a system that unifies quantum exploration with AI interpretation can hope to reconstruct these invisible funnels.
The future of pharma media measurement will belong to organisations that embrace this new paradigm: one that harmonises quantum computation, large language models, operations research frameworks, and graph-theoretic representations of human behaviour. In such a system, measurement transcends its historical role as a retrospective function. It becomes generative. It becomes predictive. It becomes a much more efficient partner in strategy.
We will be entering an era where media plans will no longer be planned, but computed; where creative strategy will be based on the mathematical structure of human decision-making; where influence will be understood as a quantum system long before it manifests as a linear metric. Pharma will measure differently.
About the author
Dr Assia Abada is EVP of customer insights and analytics, CMI Media Group. She is responsible for leading the analytics vision for the agency. With several decades of proven data analytics experience, including predictive analytics and the practical and strategic application of AI/machine learning, Dr Abada brings transformative skills to this role. Her career is marked by significant accolades, including the I-COM 2021 Data Creativity Award for Purpose, Marketing Data Strategy of the Year Award for the most effective response to COVID-19, and the Grand Prix at the Internationalist Awards for Innovative Digital Solutions. Dr Abada has extensive experience leading data sciences for clients across multiple industries including pharma. In her most recent role, she led a team of innovators including data scientists, data engineers, data analysts, and UX developers to develop cutting edge decision support solutions powered by AI and machine learning.
