Ebiquity, the independent media-benchmarking consultancy, has launched the first digital system for the UK healthcare/pharma market, called Ebiquity Portfolio Healthcare.
The service is specifically designed to gather data on prescription-only products and is intended to give insight into competitors’ creative strategy and thereby help marketers manage share of voice and make better-informed planning decisions.
The service launch will primarily encompass the UK market but it is intended to expand the data collection to cover Europe and beyond in due course.
The consultancy was appointed by a steering group established by the UK healthcare professional media agency GEM|HME to develop the service using data from key medical publishers and online media owners (including BMJ, Elsevier, Haymarket, UBM, MGP, Doctors.Net and DXS).
As part of the integrated marketing mix, online advertising is estimated to account for 25-30 per cent of total UK healthcare spend. Prior this launch, gauging what products were advertising online and how much they were spending has been an educated guess.
Guy-Jeynes Ellis, managing director of GEM|HME said: “This is an initiative that we embarked upon 18 months ago, when we managed to get all the media owners and most of the agencies round a table to agree how we could monitor digital media. It has been quite a journey, but it is fantastic that we now have a process that serves the needs of our clients, publishers and media agencies alike.
“It provides the missing piece of information in the media planning jigsaw, because until now it has been impossible to monitor the competitor spend and share of voice in the digital arena. We are proud to have driven this process.”
Subscribers can search a wide range of data, including therapy group, therapy area, company, product, brands, media channel and region. The results can be organised to show ad formats, delivered impressions and date ranges. Ads can also be viewed in animated form and in their original format and context. The system also allows the user to create bespoke reports.
The subscription cost is £12,000 per annum for creative or spend, and £15,000 for creative and spend.