5 Healthcare Video Advertising Challenges (& How to Overcome Them)

Video still reigns. People watch an average of sixteen hours of videos per week, which is why advertisers are expected to spend more than $78B on video ads by 2023.^1,2 This growth is unprecedented and speaks to video advertising’s impact. It also reflects its performance. Advertisers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than those who don’t, and 64% of consumers make a purchase after watching branded social videos.³ Despite all of the positives, however, video ads aren’t a walk in the park. Here are 5 healthcare video advertising challenges and how to overcome them.

Healthcare Video Advertising Challenge #1: Market Saturation

The volume of video ads is growing at an unprecedented rate. Here are a few stats to give you the full picture:

• 80%: The percentage of businesses that use video as a marketing tool.⁴
• 91%: The number of advertisers who feel the pandemic has made video more important.⁵
• 41%: The increase in the number of businesses using video as a marketing tool since 2016.⁶

It’s easy to see what’s happening: The Internet is becoming even more saturated with video ads. As a result, it’s easy to get lost in the sea and become invisible to HCPs.

The Solution: Get to Know Your Target HCP

You can navigate this HCP video advertising challenge by understanding your target audience and tailoring the ads to what you know about them, including their digital preferences and behaviors, as well as their expectations from ads. For example, if you’re targeting younger HCPs, CTV and OTT ads will likely stand out more than a traditional video display ad. Why? Because younger HCPs spend a lot of their time streaming their favorite shows and movies.

Healthcare Video Advertising Challenge #2: There’s No Standardized Measurement

HCPs bounce around the internet, which means you can’t just deliver healthcare video ads on one channel or device and expect them to convert. Instead, you need to spread the love, delivering ads across every touchpoint, including mobile and video channels like CTV and OTT.

Here’s why this is a challenge: These ecosystems don’t talk to each other and they measure success with different KPIs. For example, they may consider a “video view” two different things. As a result, it’s hard to measure your healthcare video ads — across all channels and devices — in one central hub. Instead, you have to do it separately, preventing you from getting a holistic view of engagement and the information you need to optimize.

The Solution: Work with an Expert

Work with a third party, like Adfire Health, that has experience using a demand-side platform (DSP) with cross-device measurement capabilities that can match devices and channels to a unique ID. By doing this, you can deliver relevant video ads, no matter where HCPs are spending their time.

Healthcare Video Advertising Challenge #3: Viewability Isn’t Guaranteed

Arguably the most significant challenge of healthcare video ads is that viewability isn’t guaranteed. According to a study, 65% of people skip video ads, and they do so the first chance they get.⁷ What’s more, as many as 76% skip them out of habit.⁸ This is a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, skippable ads enhance HCPs’ experience by giving them more control over the ads they see. On the other hand, you can spend a ton of time and resources planning, creating, and optimizing the videos, only for your audience to skip them in the first few seconds.

The Solution: Invest in Creative Best Practices

The best way to overcome the significant healthcare video ad challenge of viewability is to adopt creative best practices. Here are a few:

• Prioritize the content at the beginning of the video to increase your chances of grabbing HCPs’ attention
• Include your brand logo and make sure the video’s aesthetics are similar to the landing page where you’re driving users
• Create a video that makes sense even without audio, as many users will engage with no sound

Healthcare Video Advertising Challenge #4: Trend Chasing

There’s a long list of new video-related technologies, many of which have healthcare advertising implications — for example, new video streaming platforms and foldable smartphones. The challenge is knowing which of these developments and technologies are worth pursuing. As an example, a highly anticipated streaming platform attracted major advertisers in 2020. Unfortunately, the platform folded months after it launched, costing those brands millions in ad spend.

The Solution: Remember the Past

Base your decisions on how HCPs have done in the past. Have they been quick to jump on new technology trends or slow to adapt? Are they generally open to change and experimenting with different video technology? These answers will help you decide whether or not a trend is worth pursuing or if you should give it time before dipping your toes in.

Healthcare Video Advertising Challenge #5: Too Many Options

Given the popularity of video advertising, it’s no surprise that you have an array of established options from which to choose. Right now, you can launch a campaign using some combination of out-stream and in-stream video, native video, and non-linear ads (just to name a few). While an abundance of choice is good, it also makes it hard to know which one(s) to use.

The Solution: Experiment

When figuring out which video ads to use, make room in your budget for experimentation. Then, run tests with different video ad types. If they work and get good engagement, push more chips in. If they don’t, fold. Video advertising success isn’t a linear path. Figuring out which ads your target audience responds to will take time, but it’ll be worth it.

Overcoming Healthcare Video Ad Challenges: The Smartest Move You Can Make

It’s impossible to deny the power of video in today’s healthcare advertising world. Unfortunately, it’s also impossible to avoid the challenges that come with it, especially those related to saturation, measurement, viewability, trends, and inventory. What is possible, however, is navigating those challenges and generating unprecedented amounts of HCP engagement.