Solution Spotlight: Medscape Extend

Medscape Extend is a transformative platform designed to revolutionise how pharmaceutical advertisers communicate with verified healthcare professionals (HCPs). Utilising the advanced capabilities of PulsePoint technology, Medscape Extend enables precise identification and targeting of Medscape-verified HCPs offsite on non-endemic properties, ensuring that marketing messages reach them across their digital journey.

What problem or status quo deficiency are you solving?

In the rapidly evolving landscape of healthcare marketing, the need for a robust omnichannel strategy that seamlessly integrates professional and personal interactions with healthcare professionals (HCPs) has become paramount. For pharmaceutical marketers, delivering an omnichannel campaign outside the US across a broad range of channels and platforms has been restricted by the need to ensure messaging is only delivered to HCPs due to compliance regulations. Therefore, European advertisers have traditionally been limited to physical media and clinical website advertising.

HCPs are online multiple times a day, but only a portion of those visits are to clinical or professional sites restricted to HCPs; therefore, this has resulted in a significant amount of white space, where HCPs have not been reachable by pharmaceutical advertising.

Reaching HCPs digitally when not on clinical or professional platforms is problematic due to the strict regulations around sharing information where the advert may be viewed and engaged with by members of the public. Social media has not been a perfect solution to this challenge, as channels are public and interactivity on the platforms to like, share, and repost messages can inadvertently expand reach beyond the intended clearly defined audience.

What new innovations does your solution bring to bear on these challenges?

Medscape Extend is a transformative platform designed to revolutionise how pharmaceutical advertisers communicate with HCPs by leveraging non-endemic programmatic advertising.

Utilising the advanced capabilities of PulsePoint technology, Medscape Extend enables precise identification and targeting of Medscape-verified HCPs offsite on non-endemic properties, and thereby permits pharmaceutical marketers to reach their target audience across their daily digital journey. This enhances the effectiveness of HCP engagements by ensuring that communication is timely, relevant, and compliant with European regulations.

Medscape Extend ensures that pharma marketers stay connected with their HCP audience wherever they go on the internet to ensure true 360° coverage for the first time. There is huge value in reaching HCPs on their digital journey within endemic platforms, but for the first time it is possible to fill in the white space where HCPs are visiting non-endemic sites with certainty.

How does your solution work?

Medscape Extend works by assigning a unique PulsePoint tag to each HCP after they register and provide consent on Medscape, enabling verified HCPs to be targeted. This tag facilitates the delivery of targeted marketing messages on Medscape and across various online platforms that HCPs may visit, including news sites, sports websites, and more. Thus, supporting a truly omnichannel approach and maximising engagement and impact.

This innovative approach allows pharmaceutical marketers to engage with verified HCPs throughout their daily digital journey, whether they are conducting professional research or engaging in personal activities. By seamlessly integrating marketing messages into the daily digital lives of HCPs, Medscape Extend enhances the effectiveness of communication strategies and ensures that key messages are delivered at the most opportune times. This strategic enhancement is pivotal in improving outreach and engagement with healthcare professionals.

What makes your solution stand out in the market?

For the first time, pharma marketers can now engage with their customer groups outside professional channels, enabling a fully integrated customer journey between professional and personal interactions with those HCP customers. Our research indicates that more than 50% of HCPs viewing ads in a non-endemic environment are more likely to trust a brand they first see promoted on Medscape.

Programmatic advertising via Medscape Extend offers a significant impact in omnichannel campaigns, ensuring pharma marketers have control of the message distribution, the potential for sophisticated targeting, and certainty that are reaching an HCP audience.

What do your customers have to say about this solution?

Positive feedback from pharma marketers has highlighted the excitement around this new capability to target verified HCPs in non-endemic platforms and the benefits that will bring to the effectiveness of campaigns.

“Medscape Extend is one of the most exciting innovations in professional digital marketing that I’ve seen in the last eighteen years. As an agency who’s been pioneering programmatic deployment of paid media in the ‘to HCPs sector’ for many years, this is the first partner solution I’ve seen that I feel robustly allows us to target the HCPs from professional to non-professional website environments. We’re super excited to have this new capability as a powerful amplification tool that will help us deliver increasingly improved and cost-efficient outcomes for our campaigns”
– Martin Sibson, Head of International Media, Four Health Media

“The ability to target verified HCPs in a multi-dimensional manner across their entire media journey is a key facet of modern HCP media campaigns. The team at Medscape Extend have been able to build this in a connected, compliant, and scalable way”
– Richard Springham, CEO, Skittle Media and Solli

What concrete outcomes and KPI benefits does your solution convey?

Medscape Extend is not just a tool; it's a strategic enhancement to pharma’s marketing efforts. It allows advertisers to:

• Reach verified HCPs: Directly target professionals who are verified by Medscape, ensuring the accuracy and relevance of your audience.
• Engage across platforms: Whether HCPs are on Medscape or other websites, Medscape Extend delivers their message effectively, maximising exposure and engagement.
• Amplify communication strategies: Enhance outreach by engaging HCPs at critical moments of their online journey, from professional research to personal activities.

Because Medscape Extend targets verified Medscape HCPs in non-endemic properties, it automatically allows advertisers to increase media impression scale and frequency with those HCPs tenfold.

How does your solution compare with similar competitive offerings?

Medscape Extend is a unique solution in the marketplace – there are no competitive offerings that can truly offer a like-for-like experience. Medscape Extend utilises Medscape’s data to identify HCPs on various places in the internet and, only when a user is confirmed as a verified Medscape HCP member, they are shown an advertisement intended for them. No other HCP programmatic platform has access to Medscape’s HCP first party data, which is the fuel powering this unique offering. There are other platforms out there that offer programmatic solutions; however, they are targeting by leveraging audience data based on behavioural and contextual signals alone – not verified HCP data – thus, these competitors cannot guarantee that whoever they are targeting is truly an HCP.

About Medscape

Medscape is the leading source of clinical news, health information, and point-of-care tools for health care professionals. Medscape offers specialists, primary care physicians, and other health professionals the most robust and integrated medical information and educational tools. Medscape Education (medscape.org) is the leading destination for continuous professional development, consisting of more than 30 specialty-focused destinations offering thousands of free CME and CE courses and other educational programs for physicians, nurses, and other health care professionals. Both Medscape and Medscape Education are part of WebMD Health Corp., an Internet Brands company.

About PulsePoint

PulsePoint is a leading technology company that uses real-world data in real time to optimize campaign performance and revolutionize health decision-making. Leveraging proprietary datasets and methodology, PulsePoint targets healthcare professionals and patients with an unprecedented level of accuracy—delivering unparalleled results to the clients we serve. The company is now a part of Internet Brands, a KKR portfolio company and owner of WebMD Health Corp. For more information, visit pulsepoint.com.