Cookies May Be Crumbling, but You Can Still Use Technology to Reach HCPs

Cookies have been a part of digital marketing for decades, yet a new drive for consumer privacy may be ushering in a cookieless future. To succeed in the new high-privacy environment, pharma marketers and their ad agencies are seeking new ways to overcome access barriers and help more patients afford needed medicines. ConnectiveRx can deliver your brand’s savings offer to your target HCPs — without using cookies — in the one place where they spend the most working time: in the EHR. This article provides a quick history of cookies, explains the push to eliminate cookies and expand privacy, and describes our cookieless in-EHR messaging solution. Let’s get rolling. 

A Quick History of Cookies

Although digital marketing is relatively new — the first clickable banner went live in 1993[i] — it continues to experience outsized growth. In fact, in 2021 digital marketing accounted for 43% of global advertisement spending[ii].

Along the path to digital domination, the ubiquitous “cookie” was introduced in 1994 as a way to enable advertisers to track user’s browsing habits and usage patterns in order to tailor promotions and marketing collateral to their tastes. Cookies allowed advertisers to serve targeted ads across multiple platforms including Google, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, etc.[iii]

The Push to Eliminate Cookies and Expand Privacy

Today, a new consumer privacy push has put cookies on the chopping block. Recent data breaches on major platforms helped spill the tea on the way customer data is collected, used, and shared across the internet. The public response to these data-sharing revelations has pulled data privacy to the front burner and turned up the heat on cookies. States have established an array of dissimilar privacy requirements, making data collection and application more complicated and cumbersome. And while advertisers are looking for a single law covering the entire nation, that idea has been rejected — for now at least — by the U.S. Congress.[iv]

But it’s not just governments pushing for privacy. Major web browsers have ended (or are ending) support for 3^rd-party cookies, and Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) initiative forces app makers to ask permission before they can collect a unique identifier on every iOS device.[v] Not to be outdone, Google recently introduced its Privacy Sandbox, “…an industry-wide effort to develop new technology that will improve people’s privacy across the Web and apps on Android. The proposed solutions will limit tracking of individuals and provide safer alternatives to existing technology on these platforms while keeping them open and accessible to everyone.”[vi]

The upshot of all this is that most CMOs don’t feel prepared to deal with new data privacy laws and how they might affect business.[vii] That effect could be significant. For its part, Facebook said in early 2022 that, all by itself, Apple's App Tracking Transparency feature would decrease the company's 2022 sales by about $10 billion.[viii] TBH, there’s no doubt that the move toward enhanced online privacy will negatively impact cookie-based advertising.

Our Cookieless In-EHR Messaging Solution

So what technological advances can pharma marketers and their ad agencies leverage to help more patients afford life-saving medicines? Working with ConnectiveRx, they can deliver brand savings offers to their target HCPs — without using cookies — in the one place where those HCPs spend the most working time: in the EHR. (BTW, to learn more about EHR messaging, see our blog Throwing Banner Ads on Websites Is So Basic; Instead, Get Your Client’s Savings Offer in Front of HCPs While They’re Prescribing in the EHR.)

Our purpose-built solution helps get savings offers into the e-prescribing screens of key EHRs at the very moment HCPs are in the process of selecting a medication. These copay savings offers are sent through our exclusive Select EHR Network, which includes blue-chip hospital/health system EHR platforms such as:

• Epic (the leading hospital EHR)
• Allscripts
• athenaOne
• Practice Fusion

Working with these leading EHRs, we deliver ScriptGuide patient-savings messages at the point of care to some of the country’s largest clinical health systems, including more than 80,000 prescribers. And we expect to add an additional 14,000 prescribers to our network soon. Bottom line: we crush it on in-EHR messaging.

Don’t sleep on this. It’s time you learned about our EHR-generated patient savings alerts that help patients get started on the path to medication adherence. To find out more about ScriptGuide delivered via the Select EHR Network, check out our Awareness & Adherence page.

References:

[i] Monnappa A. The History and Evolution of Digital Marketing. https://www.simplilearn.com/history-and-evolution-of-digital-marketing-article.

[ii] Yahoo Finance. Sales of Outdoor Advertising to Cross a Market Valuation of US$ 51.4 Bn by 2032; Digital-Out-of-Home Advertising Gives Traction. https://www.yahoo.com/now/sales-outdoor-advertising-cross-market-160000470.html#:~:text=Digital%20marketing%20accounted%20for%2043,by%20the%20end%20of%202032.

[iii] Adlucent. Understanding The Impact of Privacy On Digital Marketing. https://www.adlucent.com/resources/blog/understanding-the-impact-of-privacy-on-digital-marketing/.

[iv] Martech. Proliferating privacy laws, changes in data gathering worry marketers: IAB report. https://martech.org/proliferating-privacy-laws-changes-in-data-gathering-worrying-marketers-iab-report/

[v] Hero Digital. The Cookieless Future Impact Report. https://herodigital.com/campaign/cookieless-future-ga/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwnbmaBhD-ARIsAGTPcfVsmtTRZ_IajIcLlDJiiG95fB8LdEBTnIfu3gPx6jV5HLGoKg6NR1saAsuPEALw_wcB

[vi] Google. Protecting Your Privacy Online. https://privacysandbox.com/intl/en_us/.

[vii] PMW. Over half of CMOs feel unprepared for data privacy changes. https://www.performancemarketingworld.com/article/1799505/half-cmos-feel-unprepared-data-privacy-changes.

[viii] CNBC. Facebook says Apple iOS privacy change will result in $10 billion revenue hit this year.   https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/02/facebook-says-apple-ios-privacy-change-will-cost-10-billion-this-year.html.