Branded pharmaceutical websites generate highest lifts in Rx conversion and adherence

Based on comScore's permission-based panel of one million US online persons and survey data from more than one hundred pharmaceutical studies, these benchmarks show that online pharmaceutical marketing continues to have a positive and sizeable impact on brand awareness, favourability, and conversion among patients and prospects. To download a copy of the report, please visit the following link: http://www.comscore.com/2012PharmaceuticalBenchmarks.

"Over the years, our benchmarking studies have proven the impact that online marketing continues to have on increasing consumer awareness and favourability toward health brands, ultimately driving treatment," said John Mangano, vice president for comScore Health and Pharmaceutical Solutions. "As we continue to provide the industry standard for measuring online pharmaceutical brand lifts, we're also excited to introduce significant innovations to our methodology that will allow marketers to quantify not only the incremental conversions driven by their online campaigns, but also the incremental impact of each ad exposure in driving overall brand lift."

In conjunction with the release of the latest benchmarks, comScore is introducing three critical enhancements to its Pharmaceutical Rx Lift Measurement studies in order to provide pharmaceutical marketers even more actionable insight into the impact of their brand campaigns. The industry-leading Pharmaceutical Rx Lift methodology now allows marketers to determine the incremental effect of specific campaign elements such as type of ad unit on overall brand lift, quantify the viewable impressions delivered by ad campaigns, and provide brand safety by ensuring that pharmaceutical ads are not delivered alongside undesirable content such as contraindicated health information. Designed to meet the unique needs of the health and pharmaceutical industries, these methodology enhancements are based on recent innovations introduced by the comScore validated Campaign Essentials (vCE) solution and Smart Lift attribution methodology.

Branded site visitation yields most significant lifts in new patients and Rx adherence

Supporting previous benchmarking studies, the most recent findings indicate that exposure to online display ads yields a nominal lift in brand awareness among prospects, with a higher lift seen for exposure and interaction with rich media ads. However, branded website visitation continues to have the greatest impact for both prospects and patients, yielding significant lifts not just in awareness, but also in favourability and conversion. Existing patients of a pharmaceutical brand who visited the brand site increased their refill rate by 14.7 percentage points compared to the control group. Prospects who visited a branded site also saw a positive increase of 8.9 percentage points in beginning treatment compared to those with no exposure to the site.

*Defined as interactive digital media

Branded pharmaceutical sites have consistently produced the highest lifts in generating conversions, so a significant focus for marketers now lies in understanding what drives patients and prospects to their branded sites. The Pharmaceutical Rx Lift Measurement studies that produce these benchmarks now incorporate three important innovations to this end (described in detail below) that provide critical insights into which channels are most successful in driving users to branded sites and generating conversions.

New Rx lift attribution model helps identify individual ads with greatest impact on site visitors

The first enhancement to the measurement methodology is the use of an attribution model to identify the incremental effect of each component in a campaign on brand lift and prospect or patient conversions. Based on comScore's breakthrough Smart Lift attribution methodology currently used in comScore AdEffx Brand Survey Lift studies, the new attribution model represents an important departure from 'last exposure' attribution, which credits any brand impact from a campaign to the last ad seen by a site visitor prior to taking a survey. Instead, the new approach accounts for the incremental contribution of each ad exposure seen by a respondent, both before and after a survey, in calculating the overall impact of a campaign.

This approach to attribution modelling is used in Rx Lift studies not just to understand which ad exposure in a campaign had the most impact in driving overall brand lift, but also to determine which publisher was most successful in increasing the intent to seek treatment among branded site visitors. With the ability to measure the effectiveness of advertising at various publisher sites, pharmaceutical marketers can build more efficient online media plans and eliminate wasteful spending on underperforming channels.

Studies identify ads running on contraindicated content

Another key innovation comes from the inclusion of campaign delivery validation in every Rx Lift study through comScore's validated Campaign Essentials (vCE), which provides visibility into the exact placement of ads online. Through this addition, pharmaceutical marketers now have the ability to determine whether their ads are being delivered on sites with objectionable content or running alongside content on contraindicated conditions, thereby addressing a key concern for pharmaceutical marketers.

Pharmaceutical online advertising tests provide online blackout testing

A final core capability provided by this solution is the means to support local blackout testing efforts for pharmaceutical marketing campaigns - a first for the industry. Through vCE's geographic blocking capability and ability to measure ad exposures seen in local markets, pharmaceutical marketers carrying out offline blackout tests in certain markets can now conduct parallel online blackout tests to build more cohesive cross-platform campaign strategies. The studies can also provide these key exposure metrics by markets for inclusion in market mix models.

To learn more about the new enhancements to the comScore Pharmaceutical Rx Lift Measurement Solutions methodology, please contact John Mangano at moc.erocsmoc@onagnamj. To download a copy of the 2012 Online Marketing Effectiveness Benchmarks for the Pharmaceutical Industry, click here.

About comScore Health and Pharmaceutical Solutions

comScore Health and Pharmaceutical Solutions delivers in-depth information needed to understand the impact that brand, condition-specific, and health websites have on consumers' brand awareness, conversion, and patient compliance, in addition to insights into health care professionals' online usage. comScore products deliver actionable insights to help refine consumer profiles, evaluate and test creative campaign elements across traditional and digital media, identify key alliances, optimise interactive marketing initiatives, benchmark against the competition and accurately measure the ROI of web site and online marketing programs. For more information, go to http://www.comscore.com/Industry_Solutions/Pharmaceutical.