"Healthcare audience targeting has changed fast, and expectations have climbed even faster." As HealthVerity Vice President of Marketing, Amy Sitnick, put it at the start of a recent webinar, “Audience advertising targeting has gotten very complicated over the last couple of years.” With more pressure to launch quickly, measure rigorously and justify spend with transparency, the panel explored a simple question with big implications: has the data behind healthcare audiences evolved enough to keep up?
In this moderated panel discussion, Chief Data Scientist, Austin Eliazar Ph.D., Sales Director of Media and Agencies, Richard Pisciotta and Vice President of Marketing, Amy Sitnick, of HealthVerity are joined by Senior Vice President of Biddable Media Michael Caruso from SSCG Media Group to explore how healthcare audiences are being disrupted and what that means for media performance and decision-making.
Amy framed the conversation around stewardship. “Precision is not a nice to have. It really is a responsibility of all of us,” she said, pointing to the scale of investment and the need to ensure dollars are spent thoughtfully.
That responsibility shows up in the questions agencies and brand teams ask about audience data: Where did it come from? How current is it? How quickly can it be activated? Can it stand up to scrutiny from compliance teams?
When Amy asked what matters most when evaluating an audience data provider, Michael Caruso did not start with price. “I think first and foremost, the non-negotiable is really compliance and privacy, right?” he said. He outlined that his team needs to move quickly and confidently: quality and recency, clear validation, smooth activation across the platforms clients use and proof that the data performs. “Speed to activation and how fast we can get there is important,” he added, alongside a growing interest in customization and how data can support planning and insights, not just targeting.
Richard Pisciotta explained where many audience providers struggle today. From his perspective, the challenge often starts with the foundation. “A lot of the partners are relying mainly on open medical claims, which, you know, are great, but they’re not the complete view of a patient journey." The limitations compound when modeling sits on top of incomplete inputs. “They’re also building them on modeling or predictive modeling that is essentially guesses and assumptions along the way,” he said.
That matters because even strong activation metrics can mask waste. You can reach a lot of people, but you may not be reaching the right people, especially when a condition is narrowly defined.
Amy asked the panel to address a reality many marketers know well: lookalike models are everywhere. Caruso was candid. “We use it a ton. You know, I’ll be very honest with that,” he said, while also pointing to what is drawing more scrutiny. “The waste is clearly a problem in modeled audiences,” he noted, particularly when it is hard to understand how a segment was built.
Austin Eliazar added a technical perspective that still acknowledged the value of prediction, while drawing a sharp line between prediction and proof. “It’s still a prediction. It’s informed guesswork,” he said. HealthVerity approaches audiences differently because of the breadth and depth of its real-world data ecosystem. “We’re not in the predicting audiences. We’re in the reporting audiences,” he said.
That shift changes what marketers can know with confidence, including where patients are and where they are not. In Austin's view, having that negative information is essential for reducing waste and improving efficiency, especially for complex conditions that require more than one clinical signal.
Amy brought the discussion into rare disease, where small patient populations can expose the shortcomings of broad models. Rich described what agencies often see in-market: a small known patient population ballooning into a massive activation segment. “That’s… there’s a ton of waste in that,” he said.
Michael agreed, focusing on what brands can rationalize. “When it’s, you know, 50 times bigger than what your patient population is. That’s when it becomes a problem,” he said.
Want the full conversation, including the panel’s examples and practical guidance for evaluating audience strategies? Watch the webinar replay and see how HealthVerity Audiences is raising the standard for precision and accuracy.