WPP’s CMI Media Group is stitching together a major hole in the tech side of the market with its newly launched advertising technology division, Ad Astra, proposing an integrated solution to one of the biggest technological challenges facing pharma marketers today.
Ad Astra ("to the stars" in Latin) weaves together once-fragmented technological systems with a “modular suite of interoperable solutions that combine precision data, advanced ad tech, and intelligent orchestration capabilities to drive measurable business outcomes,” CMI Media Group explained in a June 30 press release.
The concept was born and bred to help CMI’s own needs years before now launching to the public. Like most media agencies, the firm found itself in need of customized technologies to help through its processes. To establish a centralized solution, the company opted to build its own interconnected technology stacks to rid itself of inefficiencies and disruptions caused by disconnected workflows and otherwise fragmented tech.
“Technologies drive efficiencies when used properly, and they can drive noise when they're not. Simplifying the stack eliminates the noise,” the company’s group president, tech and platforms, Oleg Korenfeld explained in an interview with Fierce Pharma Marketing ahead of its launch.
Ad Astra’s ecosystem of data solutions has already been fine-tuned and “battle-tested.” It’s currently being used on “every single one” of CMI’s clients, Korenfeld explained. To start, Ad Astra will launch with its flagship omnichannel orchestrator, aptly called 'Orchestrator.' The tool fits in with the “most unique piece to what healthcare marketers are trying to solve for right now," and considering that CMI has run over 300 campaigns through the platform, Ad Astra has essentially “solved it,” Korenfeld said.
Omnichannel orchestration, an area that CMI has particularly zoned in on over the last ten years, is a well-known marketing focus that essentially unifies data to create a continuous, customized experience across different channels. In the healthcare space, however, things take a slightly different shape, Korenfeld explained. Healthcare-specific marketing must take into consideration sales rep and healthcare customer relationship management (CRM) platforms along with a number of other pieces that must be coordinated to boost efficiency, he said.
“By coordinating it, you're removing duplication of audience reach, and by removing the duplication of audience reach, your investments in media [are] that much more effective,” the executive said.
Ad Astra’s platform is primed and ready to support “pretty much any healthcare marketer and beyond,” according to Korenfeld, fitting seamlessly into users’ existing tech stacks. Its Ad Astra Orchestrator touts “predictive modeling and real-time engagement signals” for marketers to fit their messaging and deliver “one cohesive story” to healthcare practitioners and patients alike, according to its website.
CMI Media Group was founded in 1989 and acquired by WPP in 2016. Like most long-established marketing agencies, “we’re evolving,” Korenfeld said. Part of that evolution stems from listening to the changing needs of its clients, which these days revolves in part around “actual technology.”
To put it another way, “the market has shifted; modern life sciences organizations are developing their moats and many are doing so with the infusion of sophisticated, in-house AI/tech and data enablement, especially around commercial, medical and omni-channel,” CMI Media Group CEO Susan Dorfman explained in a company release.
“The launch of Ad Astra empowers these organizations, along with media publishers and partner agencies alike, to instantly access, plug into and configure flexible and agile data, technology and APIs to build and protect those moats and value proposition,” Dorfman noted.
For Korenfeld, bringing a technology like Ad Astra to market is a long-held dream, he told Fierce.
“I really feel it's our job to educate healthcare marketers on what the most efficient way to manage the [technology] stack,” he said. “We can consult them on what the proper stack is, and now we can give them a solution that solves for a lot of their problems, so it's not just saying, hey, we can just tell you what you should be doing—we can offer you solutions to actually execute it too.”