As we move into 2025, the importance of leveraging connected TV (CTV) for marketing will only continue to grow. With streaming TV expected to increase by 12.9% in 2025 alone, the shift in advertising spend towards CTV is becoming unavoidable. By 2026, nine streaming services will each generate over $1 billion in ad revenue, and CTV will account for 20% of daily media consumption among U.S. adults, according to eMarketer.
The programmatic CTV boom
Several key factors are driving this rapid expansion of CTV advertising in 2025:
- FAST (free ad-supported TV) channels are increasing, opening up more inventory and opportunities for advertisers.
- Unified frequency management is improving, allowing brands to manage overlap with linear TV and prevent overexposure.
- New advertisers are entering the CTV space, recognizing its potential for targeted and cost-effective reach.
However, simply adopting CTV into your marketing mix won’t be enough to differentiate your strategy, especially for pharma marketers. To stand out in an increasingly crowded space, marketers need smarter, more differentiated patient and caregiver targeting — and the ability to reach patients during critical health moments beyond often outdated and commoditized claims data.
How Health Union can help you reach net-new audiences
Health Union is the largest community-based data activation platform with a unique ability to turn real-time, consented 1P patient data into actionable audience segments. Unlike traditional claims data, which can be 6 months to 5 years old, Health Union’s data is refreshed daily and drawn from the engagements of real patients and caregivers in over 52 condition-specific online communities. This gives brands unmatched access to deeply engaged patients who are currently experiencing health challenges and are ready to take action.
By targeting patients based on real-time behavioral triggers, Health Union enables marketers to optimize CTV spending and reach net-new audiences that are otherwise invisible to claims-based data providers. This means you can improve the effectiveness of your CTV campaigns and expand your reach to highly engaged patients in a way that other leading providers simply can’t.
Case study: Amplify+ audiences reach high-performing, net-new audiences
A major MVPD (multichannel video programming distributor) provider with over 10 million households partnered with Health Union to expand its audience reach across multiple therapeutic categories.
Objective: The goal was to increase audience reach and engagement in a highly competitive landscape, targeting patients across multiple therapeutic categories.
Results: Health Union’s Amplify+ audiences, built on active, 1P patient data, drove:
- 76% more incremental reach versus leading claims-based data providers
- 1.3 million new households reached that were not accessible through traditional data sources
