by Terrence Brown, VP, Digital and AI Strategy
According to Gartner’s Hype Cycle, the “peak of inflated expectations” occurs when a new technology is introduced, causing excitement about its potential. After cutting through the hype and seeing the limitations of new technology, people experience a “trough of disillusionment.” Finally, these technologies achieve a “plateau of productivity,” where consumers pick applications that bring value and a significant return on investment.
Many of the technology trends for 2025 are rapidly moving to where users are finding and implementing meaningful applications for these technologies. Recognizing that no single trend is the be-all and end-all is crucial, as a combination of strategies will help marketers do their best to build and promote brands.
In 2025, the technology that brings so many disparate digital marketing areas together will again be artificial intelligence (AI). With that in mind, here are 25 predictions for digital healthcare marketing in 2025.
- Healthcare marketers will continue to make predictions for the year. OK, that one was cheap but accurate, right?
- The true potential of AI for digital healthcare marketing will enter its practical phase. Pharma companies will rethink how marketing to patients and HCPs works in the age of AI. Agencies will reimagine old ways of doing things, and AI will become a standard part of many processes, not just creative output.
- AI agents will have their breakout moment, with much concern and handwringing from healthcare companies. What generative AI experienced in the last two years will begin for AI Agents this year. There will be much debate over allowing AI to appear to make decisions on its own (which isn’t how agents work). Healthcare companies will find that very specific, narrowly defined purposes for automating repetitive tasks to free up employees to make better use of their time will prove valuable and scalable.
- AI agents will further enhance marketing automation. Campaign management will improve/be more efficient through advanced automation features like A/B testing, real-time optimization, and personalized email strategies. Audience-building, segmentation, and campaign analysis will improve and evolve, giving marketers more time to focus on strategy. However, will the time saved just be used to manage the AI agents?
- Martech tools will emerge that are not intended to be used by humans. AI agents will give rise to a new category of martech tools created to be operated exclusively by AI agents. These tools will give humans more time to analyze data and draw compelling insights to help optimize strategies rather than spending hours and hours inside a dashboard or other data collection interfaces.
- Personalized email marketing and AI-generated emails will surge, causing a return to clear, concise, and distinctly human communications. As more recipients, especially HCPs, become more familiar with AI-generated text and savvy about filtering out inbox noise, the preference for more personal emails will drive this marketing area.
- Extreme marketing personalization will continue until the inevitable backlash. Using generative AI to craft highly tailored content for users based on their behaviors, preferences, and demographics is standard practice in retail advertising, and this year will see this happening more in healthcare marketing. Drug brands can’t directly target individuals for patient marketing but expect a ramping up of this for HCPs in 2025.
- More terrible AI-created content will be endured. Automating content production like blog posts, social media updates, and product descriptions using generative AI tools has enabled marketers to be more efficient in their efforts, but this year will see a saturation point of “uncanny valley” cringe ads and obviously non-human communications. The best marketers will use AI to help scale efforts but rely on human creativity and emotion to craft memorable messages and materials.
- AI-powered user journey mapping: AI tools will supercharge the use of AI to analyze patient and HCP interactions with brands and identify critical touchpoints for those key audiences. This will help optimize the user journey to reduce friction and increase overall campaign and brand satisfaction.
- AI chatbots explicitly designed for drug brands will become essential. Launching new treatments for diseases requires a significant educational/ informational commitment. AI chatbots narrowly focused on a drug or disease will become the most effective ongoing tools to help patients, caregivers, and HCPs. Think interactive FAQ webpages, information hubs for doctors, and training resources for sales reps.
- AI chatbots will disagree with and debate actual doctors. Patients will trust whoever has better reviews and higher follower counts. Kidding! I just threw this one in for fun. Chatbots will play an important role, but always in support of doctors and HCPs, not in place of them.
- Ethical concerns about AI will become standardized for healthcare marketers. Users will demand the responsible use of AI be prioritized to ensure transparency and accountability in AI applications. Sustainable AI will gain ground but won’t be a vital issue this year.
- Healthcare agencies will continue stressing about AI replacing jobs. Expect even more headlines (and clickbait, probably written by AI) about AI pushing experienced art directors, project managers, and copywriters out the agency door into unemployment. Fear and conflict are great for getting attention, but what’s happening with AI will continue to be just as confusing as it has been.
- Data privacy measures for AI will be even more important. Implementing AI solutions that respect user consent and safeguard data will be mainstream requirements. Healthcare marketers can lead the way in maintaining regulatory compliance while extracting valuable insights based on years of compliance experience.
- Predictive analytics using AI will become ubiquitous. For decades, marketers have leveraged data-driven insights to help companies optimize their websites and promotional campaigns. AI is helping marketers make more informed decisions, and this year, it will cement its role in predicting outcomes and assisting marketers in refining their strategies in real time and ahead of time.
- Cookies aren’t going away. Again. Not this year, anyway. The deprecation of cookies has been a hot topic for the last few years, but Google decided to give users choices to control how their data is tracked. Apple made its Safari browser capable of blocking all third-party cookies 5 years ago, but like Google did last year, it’s a user’s choice to enable cookies. I don’t see this changing much in 2025.
- Connected Television (CTV)/streaming TV ads will keep growing. New campaign measurement methods are emerging, with more accurate targeting methods and increased inventories, which opens access for these platforms to smaller brands with smaller ad budgets. The question for healthcare marketers is how effectively they can leverage CTV ads while dealing with compliance requirements like ISI.
- More CTV users will be on ad-supported streaming services, increasing ad inventory. According to Roku, viewers embraced entirely ad-supported channels like Tubi, The Roku Channel, and YouTube in 2024. Platforms like Netflix entered the programmatic ecosystem and created opportunities to reach audiences on well-known streaming services through premium inventory. This means CTV will be an even more important channel for healthcare marketers to reach their audiences.
- A lot more healthcare marketers will try CTV advertising for the first time. This has already started and will increase dramatically throughout the year. Peacock increased its advertisers by 40% last year, and Disney+ surpassed 1,000 global advertisers in Q1 ’24. Costs will lower, opening access for many smaller brands seeking to connect with their audiences. Advertisers will shift from open auction buys to more strategic deal ID-based approaches. Tools like PAIR (Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation) will securely leverage first-party data.
- Ads on CTV channels will continue to lag dramatically, creatively, and technically behind the shows themselves. The original series featured on streaming services are often movie-quality. Think of shows in 2024 like “Shogun,” “The Penguin,” and even “Yellowstone.” They were all cinematic experiences. Why can’t the ads look half as good?
- There will be more M&A in healthcare agencies and pharmaceutical companies. Omnicom Group’s acquisition of IPG is the current headliner but expect many more this year as a much more pro-business administration takes over in Washington, DC.
- Social media ads will be even more important for pharma brands. Organic posts have been essentially dead for a while, and this year, brands will have even less incentive to continue cranking out content that is seen by less than 1% of their intended audiences.
- Plenty of healthcare brands will continue making content that appears dated for their audiences. Dated might mean a month after the trend peaked. Staying on top of trends is vital for some brands, but healthcare brands need to resist the temptation to jump on memes and trends too late, making them look out of touch.
- AI platforms will start eating search engines’ lunch. Perplexity, ChatGPT search, and Gemini results at the top of all Google searches will have a greater impact this year as they gain popularity from improvements in user-friendliness and access for users. Savvy marketers will write content with content to attract the attention of AI, not just SEO.
- Brands will build their own first and zero-party data. eMarketer showed that 77% of marketers are already pursuing first-party data as an alternative to third-party data, and nearly 15% plan to do so this year. Brands must build and maintain trust with their audiences to make this happen. Zero-party data collection requires users to share their data willingly and actively, so transparency is critical, as will be the “reward” for sharing personal information. That can include informational, educational, entertaining, and exclusive content. The best healthcare marketers will create and manage two-way relationships with their users, fully valuing the opinions of their users as they optimize and create content.