Upfronts week is a tried-and-true tradition in the TV and marketing worlds. Healthcare? Not so much.
But that hasn’t stopped point-of-care digital health company PatientPoint from participating in the annual event the last two years.
Typically, upfronts include a presentation from major media networks and then a commercial commitment component from companies interested in advertising with that media company’s programming, Kasha Cacy, chief media officer at full-service agency Known, told Healthcare Brew. Often these presentations are full of glitz and glam, celebrity appearances, and lots of media bragging.
At traditional upfront presentations, the goal is to lock in Q4 TV inventory, get a competitive price advantage, and find advertisers for popular programming like live sports and events. “Those three factors tend not to be as strongly at play in a healthcare space as they are in electronics or some of the other spaces,” Cacy said.
For PatientPoint, this meant bringing Mike Varshavski, a healthcare influencer known as “Dr. Mike” and a family practice provider who’s known for being outspoken online in an effort to debunk misinformation, to the stage. The company’s presentation also featured a conversation about marketing channels with the Point of Care Marketing Association (POCMA) and media agency IPG Mediabrands Health, as well as a panel by marketing research and tech company Circana.
Though when it came to the commercial engagement element of an upfront, “what it seems like PatientPoint was doing was the first [presentation] part,” Cacy said.
What’s the point? PatientPoint is featured on waiting room and exam room screens at more than 30,000 locations, according to the company, and its main advertisers are major pharma companies. So entering into a marketing event where advertisers try to catch the eye of companies that use a screen to reach audiences (or patients, in this case) doesn’t feel like a total stretch, Cacy said.
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That reach PatientPoint offers advertisers as well as its “behavior-changing content” that’s sponsored by pharma companies and pharmacies is what makes tapping into upfronts such an enticing opportunity, Chief Marketing Officer Kyle Barich told us.
“The most important thing for us to do is to be where our customers are and where their concerns are,” he said. “All of these [advertising] folks are looking for new ways of getting quality audiences. They need to target audiences, need to get outcomes. So they’re going to upfronts to try to find new ways of doing that.”
Plus, point-of-care—which is defined as when a patient interacts with providers for care, according to POCMA—is a growing segment in healthcare, and PatientPoint is one of its major players. An April study from POCMA showed point-of-care revenue for 17 of its members has grown 171% since 2019, reaching $803+ million in 2023.
Upfronts of the future. So, with a company like PatientPoint finding value in upfronts, could we see more healthcare companies flocking to make presentations in years to come?
Cacy said it’s still a “very specific category,” where it makes most sense for Big Pharma companies looking to advertise on screens.
“If I look at what PatientPoint did, I think it was less of an upfront and more of what I would describe as an innovation day, like, ‘here’s what our product road map is, here’s what our new products are,” she said. “That doesn’t specifically scream upfront to me.”
Though that doesn’t discourage Barich, who’s planning to make next year’s upfront presentation “bigger and better.”
“It’s Disney and Amazon and YouTube—and now PatientPoint,” he said.