If TV's everywhere, then where does pharma need to be?

Good-bye appointment TV, hello TV everywhere. As TV and video watching becomes wherever and whenever consumers want, marketers, including pharma, have had to shift strategies to reach those hard-to-pin-down viewers.

Everyday Health and Videology think they can help. The two firms recently joined forces to create TVRx, which combines Everyday Health's audience and analytics with Videology's multiscreen campaign management and measurement. The result is a targeted video marketing approach that spans TV and digital, specifically for pharma and healthcare companies.

"Pharma and the TV industry as a whole have been focused on one screen and targeting consumers based on age and gender for decades," said Yadin Shemmer, president of consumer at Everyday Health. "But consumers have moved beyond one screen and technology has moved beyond age and gender."

Everyday Health's Yadin Shemmer

Moving beyond age and gender means targeting potential pharma consumers based on behaviorial and contributed data, he said. Shemmer did note that TVRx will only be used in "non-sensitive" broad-based therapeutic areas, citing allergy treatments as one example.  

Everyday Health and Videology are already using TVRx for more than a dozen clients, Shemmer said, and characterized initial results as "strong" with improvements including efficiency, audience quality, performance metrics, brand awareness and even sales.

Tim Castree, managing director of North America for Videology, said in a press release, "TVRx takes everything that is great about TV and incorporates the enhanced targeting and measurement capabilities of digital, to provide the most sophisticated targeting and ROI measurement across both linear TV and digital video."

Programmatic TV, which is the automated buying and planning of TV advertising, figures into TVRx as well, Shemmer said, pointing out that almost 20% of TV media buying is expected to be data-based and automated by 2019. EMarketer estimates overall programmatic including both digital and TV to grow to $20 billion by 2016, and account for 63% of all online display ads.

- see the news release