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The emergence of the internet has changed the landscape of digital healthcare marketing. Healthcare centers led the way in developing simple websites as they had the resources to invest. They utilized the sites with a combination of original content, graphic design, hard-coded webmasters, and original photography in order to let the public know about the healthcare services they offer. Over the years, websites have become increasingly more compound and sophisticated as healthcare advertising has continued to evolve.

Today, with the growing internet world, programmatic digital display advertising is exploding as it accounted for 78 percent of all digital display ads in 2017, with spending of nearly US$31.8 billion. But the healthcare and pharma accounted for only 2.8 percent of all digital ad spending in 2016, according to the report. And as industries are picking up the hyper-targeted programmatic advertising tactic, healthcare and pharma companies accounted for just 1.7 percent of the pie.

Though as most healthcare marketing organizations are not capitalizing on programmatic advertising, a large opportunity now exists for institutions that are keen to drive innovation. Programmatic advertising is a process of buying and selling ads that is automated by machines to make it more efficient. This advertising model promises to make the ad buying system more efficient, and therefore cheaper, by eliminating humans from the process wherever possible.

Opportunity for Medical Practices

Over the time, it has become essential that the healthcare industry must efficiently approach programmatic advertising as they have varying degrees of concern over consumer medical records.

Programmatic technology will probably mean there are fewer ad buyers in the world, but it could also enable both marketers and sellers to spend more of their time on planning sophisticated, customized campaigns in place of getting stuck in bureaucracy. Programmatic advertising exists in a broad array of digital channels such as display, mobile, video and social.

Healthcare systems can take advantage of this advertising model as part of their medical marketing. Most of the medical practices are investing advertising dollars on platforms that simply can't deliver the targeting needed to recognize the best potential prospects. Thus, to address this, programmatic marketplaces offer advertisers the ability to layer on advanced data targeting to identify the patients who are most ideal for the treatment they provide.

With programmatic advertising, medical marketers can add behavioral targeting to display their ad only to people who have searched for or interacted with content related to the conditions that their hospitals treat. While most programmatic ads show up in mobile apps, it would be easy to define hyperlocal audiences.

There is also a need to consider an effective strategy before getting started with programmatic advertising for healthcare marketing. And the foremost thing is to sign up with a software that allows marketers to purchase them. In this way, self-service software enables brands or agencies to buy ads. Some agencies even have their own proprietary programmatic tools to buy ads in the best interests of clients. Then they need to establish their targeting. The more targeting data they add, the more valuable reaching that audience will be.

Determining ad format is the most substantial aspect of programmatic advertising. The healthcare system must establish a clear objective for its ads as they seek to run to reap more engagement.

In a crux, programmatic advertising makes it possible to buy and place ads, including targeted advertising content, in a matter of seconds. And the advanced targeting alone offers an opportunity that only the most forward-thinking medical marketers have adopted. They can also choose their programmatic methodology as a way to minimize risks.