Programmatic advertising has fundamentally reshaped how brands buy digital media. With its promise of real-time bidding, scalable targeting, and automation, the model has brought efficiency and scale to countless industries. But when it comes to healthcare and pharmaceutical advertising, the cracks are starting to show. The complex realities of privacy regulations, niche audience segments, and content compliance have exposed a key problem: general DSPs weren’t built with healthcare in mind.

For healthcare and pharma marketers, relying on general purpose demand side platforms (DSPs) has increasingly become a liability. These platforms were primarily optimized for retail, e-commerce, and general consumer advertising. Over time, general DSPs simply can’t offer the level of control, compliance, security, or precision that healthcare digital media buying demands. The result? Brands are often left underwhelmed by campaign performance and overexposed to regulatory risk.

Architecture built with limitations

One of the problems lies in the fundamental architecture of most DSPs. A general DSP is designed to maximize reach and efficiency across broad consumer audiences. It wasn’t engineered to handle the sensitive data flows required by HIPAA regulations or the nuanced segmentation required to reach prescribing or non-prescribing healthcare providers.

A DSP built for highly-regulated verticals, by contrast, is built from the ground up with these constraints and opportunities in mind. Unlike traditional platforms, these solutions are designed to support compliant healthcare advertising from the first impression to the last click. These platforms come with features to ensure HIPAA-compliant integrations, from enhanced measurement to secure, streamlined procurement. This architecture isn’t a retrofit. It’s purpose-built for the healthcare ecosystem in mind.

Missing out on audience reach and targeting

Targeting is another critical area where general DSPs fail to deliver. In consumer advertising, broad behavioral or interest-based segments are often enough. But in healthcare, advertisers need far more specific and reliable identifiers. Effective healthcare audience targeting usually means reaching known healthcare professionals by National Provider Identifier (NPI), or engaging patients based on clinical journey, diagnosis codes, or pharmacy claims. This level of granularity simply doesn’t exist in generic DSPs, many of which rely on third-party cookie data that’s both fading and inadequate in clinical contexts.

When pharmaceutical brands attempt HCP programmatic campaigns or targeted healthcare advertising through general DSPs, they frequently encounter mismatched audience sets, wasted impressions, and opaque performance reporting. Worse yet, the lack of visibility into data sources and identity resolution mechanisms can create severe exposure for brands trying to remain compliant.

On the other hand, a healthcare programmatic platform like IQM enables marketers to build audiences with clinical precision. It supports programmatic HCP targeting that adheres to licensing regions and specialties, as well as custom segments for healthcare marketers, like patients in early diagnosis phases or providers within a specific hospital network. It does all of this while keeping privacy and auditability at the forefront, ensuring privacy-first pharma marketing that satisfies both compliance officers and media strategists.

Our latest innovation goes even further, launching the industry’s first nurse targeting product explicitly designed for healthcare clients. Nurses play an increasingly influential role in prescribing and treatment decisions, yet are often left out of traditional HCP campaigns due to data and identity limitations. With our Integrated Care Team Messaging solution, marketers can now reach licensed nurse practitioners and staff nurses using verified data, enabling messaging that reflects the whole clinical care journey, not just the final signature on a prescription.

The marketer’s dilemma

The gap between what general DSPs provide and what healthcare marketers need is becoming increasingly unsustainable. The healthcare sector is advancing quickly toward omnichannel digital transformation. Brands want to deploy omnichannel healthcare campaigns that span display, video, connected TV, native, and more. They want real-time optimization, attribution modeling, and dynamic creatives based on clinical context. But these ambitions are hobbled when marketers are forced to settle for generic platforms that lack sector-specific capabilities.

Equally important is the reporting layer. Many general DSPs offer high-level insights into click-through rates, impression counts, and other key metrics. But for healthcare and pharmaceutical programmatic advertising, this isn’t nearly enough. Healthcare marketers need detailed logs that show how each impression aligns with approved audiences, regions, and compliance rules. They need the ability to conduct audits, validate partner data sources, and measure the impact of media spend on actual healthcare outcomes, not just clicks.

The future of DSPs is now

To stay ahead, forward-thinking healthcare and pharmaceutical brands are now migrating their programmatic buying to DSPs explicitly designed to solve their pain points. These highly-regulated focused DSPs combine the scale and automation of traditional DSPs with the compliance rigor and audience intelligence that healthcare demands. They offer healthcare real-time bidding (RTB) tailored to verified HCP audiences and patient segments, ensuring media dollars are spent only where they are practical and compliant.

This shift is about more than just features—it’s about trust and strategy. As regulators pay closer attention to digital advertising practices in sensitive industries, the ability to demonstrate compliance, transparency, and ethical targeting becomes a competitive advantage. Brands that continue to rely on general DSPs may find themselves increasingly out of step with market expectations and potentially exposed to costly legal scrutiny.

In short, general DSPs are failing pharma not because they’re poorly built, but because they weren’t built for this at all. As the healthcare sector evolves, the advertising infrastructure it relies on must evolve too. By embracing platforms like IQM that are built for clinical precision, privacy, and omnichannel execution, healthcare marketers can reach the right audiences, in the proper channels, with the right message.

It’s time to raise the bar. The question marketers must ask is no longer whether they can use their current DSP, but whether they should.

Want to learn more? We’d love to connect with you. Reach out to an IQM representative today.