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While the quantity and quality of point-of-care advertising has been rising steadily in recent years, it's on the verge of an epic growth spurt. In May, investors such as Goldman Sachs and Alphabet pumped some $500 million in financing into Outcome Health. And in June, PatientPoint received a cash injection of $140 million.
While the dollar figures are impressive, it's not just money fueling POC's coming-of-age moment. The category's growth has also been facilitated by pharma's increasing desire for more targeted messaging, new technology that facilitates message delivery within the POC environment such as beacons and other forms of proximity marketing, and physicians' hunger for quality educational content that saves them time.
Of course, POC is plenty big already. Mark Boidman, managing director at Peter J. Solomon, which acted as a strategic advisor on the PatientPoint deal, says of the $8 billion or so spent on out-of-home advertising each year, about $500 million to $600 million is spent on POC messaging. Its growth, not surprisingly, has been propelled by the shift toward all things digital.
And the new infusions of cash will help the channel get bigger, and fast. Outcome Health, which says it is already blanketing almost 600 million patient visits a year, wants to wire the majority of exam rooms by 2020, explains Blake Chandlee, EVP and GM of industry strategy and emerging businesses. Similarly, PatientPoint is expanding its digital reach with programs that impact between 60% and 70% of prescribing volume in strategic specialties.
But whichever company is behind the brands trying to get their messages out, the idea is basically the same — and light years ahead of the “stacks of pamphlets for the waiting room” thinking that first put the category on the map.
But obstacles to growth still remain, ones that have prevented the category from realizing the soaring increases pundits have long predicted.
[“Clutter is a significant barrier for POC media companies trying to prove to drug makers an acceptable ROI for their products and services,” says Bob Ehrlich, Chairman, DTC Perspectives, Inc. “Patients also have their own entertainment system with their mobile devices and the growth of in office Wi-Fi makes them a viable entertainment option in waiting rooms. The challenge for POC companies providing information on disease or branded products is how to get their share of attention in that valuable 10-20 minute waiting period.”]
It hasn't helped that POC companies tout sky-high ROI figures. “I've seen people quote 20-to-1, or even higher. Yet when we do marketing-mix modeling, the POC investment doesn't show up quite that robustly,” Evans adds. Outside audits could help: “If you measure it yourself, it is naturally less credible.”
Further Reading:
- “Point-of-Care Messaging: The Next Big Opportunity in #Pharma Marketing?”; http://sco.lt/6taAfh
