The Glassdoor Optimization Most Media Agencies Are Missing

As founder of PranifyRx, I speak with multiple media agencies each week to understand their challenges and develop solutions to help them win more business, improve employee productivity and drive greater profitability.

Over the past 6 months, a common theme has emerged: recruiting, hiring and retaining employees is media agencies’ #1 challenge.

Why? The pandemic and remote working has reduced the impact of the physical workplace and company culture, while employees have raised their standards of what they expect from their work experience.

The result: The Great Resignation and declining media agency Glassdoor ratings.

Here’s an example of a NYC-based media agency’s Glassdoor ratings over the past 24 months.

Media agency Glassdoor Ratings Decline : Example 1

As competition to hire and retain media agency employees escalates, media agencies are focusing more on optimizing their Glassdoor Ratings. Plenty has been written on the basics of claiming your profile, encouraging current employees to leave reviews etc. But there’s a missing optimization almost no one is talking about, and it has to do with Glassdoor’s default sorting order: by Popularity of review.

From Glassdoor: “At a high level, our default sorting order is by "Popular" which consists of a combination of the helpful count, the recency of the review, and several other factors. Generally, reviews that are marked "helpful" get more visibility due to the algorithm of our ranking system.”

Let’s take a look at a media agency (SSCG) that’s performing quite well on Glassdoor, with improving ratings over the past 24 months:

80% of their first-page reviews were marked “Helpful” by at least one employee, of which 100% were 5-star reviews.

The only first-page review that was not marked helpful was a 3-star review.

What does this mean? It likely indicates someone at SSCG is aware of Glassdoor’s review sorting algorithm, and has decided to mark their 5-star reviews as helpful in order to get them to rank higher on the first page of reviews.

This is an easy optimization that a single person inside your media agency can implement with less than 5 minutes work.

If you want to showcase your highest-quality reviews on Glassdoor, try marking your 5-star reviews as Helpful today.

2021 PranifyRx Free Chrome Extension Report

2021 Highlights

(Free PranifyRx Chrome Extension)

2021 was a big year for PranifyRx with many premium platform features rolled out, but today we take a brief look at how the year wrapped up for the free PranifyRx Chrome Extension tool for pharma marketing strategists.

2021 Highlights

604 Rx Brands Monitored

12,467 PranifyRx User Sessions

113,894 PranifyRx User Searches Conducted

450,576 Ad Insights Delivered

$18,170 Avg. Media Spend Saved Per User

We provide the Chrome Extension free as a gift to pharma marketers who want to get an immediate, real-time snapshot of their Rx brand’s competitive landscape across Google, Facebook, Instagram, Display and TV. While the free Chrome Extension doesn’t offer historical trends, actionable insights, media spend or patient LTV forecasts like our premium platform, it does show what each competitor is doing across media channels with direct links to their creative, and it eliminates the need to click on “prescription treatment website” (aka brand-connected) SEM text ads on Google during daily/weekly competitive monitoring activities. In this way, it saves wasted ad clicks from agencies, marketers, analytics teams and other vendors in the ecosystem. (This is because Google’s own Ad Preview tools doesn’t work for Rx brand-connected ads, and is rarely used or even known about outside of the paid search team.)

We are pleased to provide the Chrome Extension for free and we are continually improving it. (Keep an eye out for an exciting announcement in the coming weeks.)

In the meantime, if you are one of the many users of the free Chrome Extension, consider supporting it by either leaving a review on the Google store listing page or upgrading to the premium PranifyRx platform to begin driving up to 7x increased ROI on your paid media campaigns.

May 2022 be abundant for you, your team and the patients we all serve.

It Pays to Be a Winner: Google RSA Insights for Pharma Marketers: # of Headline Variations

Search engine marketing is often the number one traffic driver to Rx brand websites. And Google is by far the dominant search engine. So the Google Ads migration to Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) in June is a significant shift that pharma marketing strategists need to adapt to in order to succeed in the this new machine-learning-driven marketing world.

Data above through June 2021. Pharma campaigns lag the above overall trend, but by June 2022, Google is requiring 100% of new search ads to be Responsive Search Ads (RSAs). This means pharma marketers must adapt quickly to this new world of machine-learning based campaign optimization, or lose out to competitors who adapt first.

Since PranifyRx has search ad data on over 600 Rx pharma brands, we are in a unique position to understand and help predict what types of creative messaging strategies Google’s RSA machine-learning algorithm will favor.

Using PranifyRx data from January - October 2021, we compared the number of unique search ad headlines with average ad position detected for each brand on its primary condition treatment-specific keyword.

For example, for Vyvanse we looked at data for keyword “ADHD treatment” and for Biktarvy we looked at data for keyword “HIV treatment”. This focus allows us to filter out noise associated with keywords where certain brands might not focus their attention and thus tolerate ad positions lower on the page compared to their primary indication treatment term.

When we look at a range of individual Rx treatment categories, we see the same story emerge over and over: brands that test more unique headlines tend to get better ad position.

(We won’t go deep into goodness-of-fit statistics in this post. Instead, we’ll show you the blinded data for several condition categories along with the trendlines, so you can see for yourself and maybe develop your own conclusions.)

1. HIV-1 Treatments

   (Biktarvy, Dovato, Symtuza, Descovy, Cabenuva, Rukobia, Pifeltro, Juluca, Symfi-lo, Trogarzo, Kaletra, Norvir)

HIV-1 Treatments: Avg. Ad Position vs. # of Unique Google Ad Headline Variations on Keyword “HIV treatment” (Jan - Oct 2021 PranifyRx proprietary data)

The trendline here is pretty clear: Rx brands that tested more unique headlines from Jan-Oct 2021 achieved a better average ad position compared to brands that tested fewer unique ad headlines.

2. Asthma Treatments

(Fasenra, Nucala, Xolair, Spiriva, Cinqair, Digihaler, Symbicort)

Asthma Rx Treatments: Avg. Ad Position vs. # of Unique Google Ad Headline Variations on Keyword “HIV treatment” (Jan - Oct 2021 PranifyRx proprietary data)

Again, the trendline here is clear: Asthma Rx brands that tested more unique headlines from Jan-Oct 2021 achieved a better average ad position compared to brands that tested fewer unique ad headlines.

3. Multiple Sclerosis Treatment (MS)

(Zeposia, Vumerity, Firdapse, Mavenclad, Mayzent, Ocrevus, Aubagio, Tysabri, Lemtrada, Kesimpta, Bafiertam)

The trendline here isn’t quite as strong as the first two examples above, but it is consistent: MS treatment brands that tested more unique headlines from Jan-Oct 2021 tended to achieve a better average ad position compared to brands that tested fewer unique ad headlines.

Category after category shows the same story to varying degrees: number of unique headlines is correlated with ad position. And since ad positions higher on the page can generate up to 7x higher engagement and website traffic than ad positions lower on the page, testing more headlines appears to be a relatively easy way to get more and pay less on Google.

PranifyRx premium platform users can see the actual ad headline counts and copy for each brand across over 100 specific conditions and 600 brands and easily generate more copy tests quicker.

How to Prevent End-of-Year Media Budget Overspend

The Situation: It’s early December, the holidays are here. Your team is tired and distracted, and pharma clients start going on vacation.

The Problem: Overspending Approved Media Budget

With nearly 18 years of media planning and buying experience, I’ve seen teams overspend their allocated budget a handful of times.

The Cause: The main reason teams overspend their allocated budget is due to internal miscommunication. Or rather, lack of communication.

Here’s what happens:

At the beginning of the year the client approves an overall DTC (or HCP) media budget, let’s say $1 million. The media agency plans that budget to be allocated across SEM (Google Ads, Microsoft Ads), Paid Social (Facebook, Instagram), Programmatic Display, TV, Audio, Print, Conference Coverage, Point of Care/EHR, etc. Each channel gets a specific budget based on factors like minimum buys, size of opportunity and estimated ROI.

But then reality happens. Results come in. Some partners perform well and some don’t. Budgets are re-allocated based on performance.

The client finds incremental budget and tells the agency who informs the various teams who plan the incremental and then get approvals.

In short, budgets are constantly shifting across channels and partners.

What often ends up happening is that one a single partner or channel is left out of the loop when a budget shifts and so they work with the previous number and spend that budget amount in full. Meanwhile, every other channel and partner does the same.

When the final spends for the year are being calculated to bill the client, the accounting team discovers that the team overspent the total approved budget. Uh-oh. How could this happen - see above. But more importantly, how do we prevent it from happening again?

The Solution: This has worked wonders for my teams over the past 18 years:

At the beginning of December (right about now), while there is still time left in the year, have each of your various media channel teams meet and provide:

1. Their most updated, actual YTD spend through November

2. Their planned December budget.

The overall media supervisor or director should total up each team’s numbers and double-check that it equals the total amount approved by the client.

This simple process usually reveals any disconnects and allows the team to correct the issue before it’s too late. Problem solved.

But sometimes that process doesn’t work perfectly, for example if a key team member doesn’t attend the meeting or they provide incorrect numbers at the meeting. However, the process still has huge benefits, because in the very rare case where the process is followed, but there is still a discrepancy at the end of the year, it is very easy to identify the source of the issue. This prevents the media supervisor or director from having to call an all-hands fire drill in early January. Fewer fire drills? Yes, please!

Let me know if there are other tricks you’ve learned about how to prevent media budget overspend and wrap up the year right.

Happy Holidays!

Pharma “Coming Soon” Ads: Tezspire from Amgen & AZ

Amgen and Astra Zeneca recently launched “coming soon” ads on Google for Tezspire, which is expected to receive FDA approval for severe asthma, putting it up against other asthma medications like Dupixent, Fasenra, Xolair, Nucala, Symbicort, Spiriva, Alvesco, Qvar and Cinqair.

As of 11/8/21, the coming soon Tezspire ads have been found on Google and Facebook since September, but have yet to be detected on Instagram, Display or TV.

The landing page is for healthcare professionals (HCPs) to sign up to receive info, including text messages.

PranifyRx users can login to the dashboard to get real-time ad updates on Tezspire’s ad activity across channels.

Pharma Marketing in the Age of Machine Learning Algorithms (How Google Ads Making RSA’s The Only Ad Format Impacts Rx Brands)

In September, Google announced that all new Google search ads must be Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) as of June 2022.

This means standard expanded text ads (ETAs) are being retired. More importantly, this means that pharma brands must adapt to this new machine learning (ML) reality on Google, or risk losing share to more advanced brand marketers.

What’s actually changing?

RSAs will be the only ad format for Google Ads after June 2022.

RSAs continue a trend from Google of dis-aggregating the elements of each ad. Instead of writing entire ads (Headline & Description), Google will be requiring brands to submit up to 4 independent headlines and up to 15 independent description lines. This yields over 30k potential ad variations for Google’s ML algorithm to test and optimize for each ad group. Sounds like a PRT/PRC/MLR nightmare, right?

Well, this is actually similar to how Sitelinks have worked for years.

It’s just being applied to the entire ad unit now. So it’s manageable from an MLR perspective. They just need to be educated on the shift.

Google is essentially taking control of how all of your individual ad elements serve together. Google believes their machine learning algorithms can do a better job of testing and optimizing ad variations compared to the old way of manual A/B tests that depended on consistent agency execution.

How does this impact Pharma Google ad campaigns and accounts?

1. Account structures will need to be much more strategically organized. Google recommends each ad group have keywords generating a minimum of 12,000 impressions per month (3,000 impressions/week). Gone are the days of super-granular account structures with tens of campaigns and hundreds of ad groups.

   So the Patient/HCP Pathway is back.

   Think: Symptoms > Condition >Treatment > Brand > Competitors.

   This all depends on the size of the therapeutic category of course, but it’s a good framework to build from.

2. Ad Copy Testing will require a modified approach. Soon to be gone are the days of straightforward A/B ad copy tests. Google’s automated machine learning algorithm is taking more control over this process, but there are still ways to optimize performance and get better ad position at a lower cost per click than your competitors.

   PranifyRx data across many therapeutic categories shows a strong correlation between the number of ad variations and ad position. (By the way, industry research shows that brands in top ad positions get up to 7x more clicks than brands in ad position 4.) So this is a big deal for brands that want to grow share.

   This is likely due to a couple of factors:

   First, Google’s ML algorithms thrive on click data and brands with more ad variations require more clicks for Google to optimize. If you can feed Google more variations, it appears that Google will give them better ad position to get more clicks to feed their models. Second, more ad variations require a greater diversity of language, and…

3. Including the right language/words in your ad variations can yield up to 88% cost per click savings. That’s pretty remarkable. Google’s machine learning is already generating learnings about what’s working (e.g. driving ad clicks from search users) and what isn’t. PranifyRx data across over 500 Rx brands reveals what ad copy language Google is most likely to serve. (We presented the data at DTC National in October 2021. Reach out and we’ll send you a copy.)

Shameless plug: The only source to see how your Rx brand is performing in this new machine-learning paradigm - compared to it’s in-condition competitors - is PranifyRx.

You can’t see it anywhere else. Not even Google shares this data.

Our ML-readiness tool is already helping Rx brands take more share. It took over a year to build, and I’m really proud of it. See how it works.

For Rx brands that are ML-ready, it’s an exciting new world for digital advertising.

When PRT/PRC/CMLR Comments or Rejects Your Pharma Digital Ad Campaign Copy or Targeting Strategy

Your team spent weeks building the campaign: keyword research; patient, HCP and competitive insight research; ad copy development; A/B test and learn plans, landing page mapping.

Then you built the PRT job submission in Veeva Vault, got it submitted, you wait, and then you get “comments”.

Maybe some of the comments are “global” and threaten to derail a significant part of plans. This is the reality, but not all hope is lost.

Here are 3 ways you can engage strategically to elevate the conversation with PRT/PRC/CMLR and your brand marketing client, and maybe save the effectiveness of the campaign and help more patients and healthcare professionals:

1. Gently digging deeper to understand the real reason behind PRT’s comments or hesitancy can be a powerful way to add value for the brand. Choose your battles, but ask questions to reveal the why behind the why. Often it’s because the new copy is a shift from the way things were done in the past. If that’s the real reason, you have an opportunity to lead your client to a better path forward.

2. Estimate the financial impact on cost per click (CPC) or CPM. Many PRT/CMLR comments have real financial consequences that they don’t realize until you show them.

For example, if PRT is requiring certain copy (e.g. multiple symptoms) to be spelled out a certain way, this may negatively impact your search campaign by preventing you from including words that improve ad relevance and CPC. If you can estimate the negative impact on CPC and then multiply that by the number of clicks your campaign is projected to drive, that dollar figure can sometimes be big enough to make PRT think twice, because their conviction is not as strong as the negative financial impact of their feedback.

3. Calculate the financial impact on Rx revenue. Building from #2 above, you can estimate the loss in site traffic that is expected to result from implementing the PRT comments. If CPC will go up because of lower ad relevance, and assuming a static budget, then clicks and traffic will necessarily decline. Take your Rx-script lift conversion rate data, multiply by the expected decline in site traffic and then multiply that figure by the script LTV. You may be surprised how big the financial impact on Rx revenue is from what might appear to be a minor comment in Veeva.

None of these steps are guaranteed to work, and the relationship is the most important consideration, but if you have the data, you can engage in a truly strategic conversation that elevates your role on the team regardless of the final outcome on the specific copy feedback.

5 Pharma Marketing Strategies to Make Sure Your Team is “Incremental-ready”

Are you ready for it?

It’s the beginning of calendar Q4, which means pharma marketers can expect to receive questions/offers/invitations from senior leadership for how they would spend incremental advertising/media budget.

Here are 5 quick strategies to help maximize your chances of capturing the available incremental budget to grow Rx scripts and revenue, agency billings and maybe even do some innovative work that makes the world a better place by improving patient lives.

1. Understand where incremental budget comes from.

Incremental budget typically originates from senior leadership’s need/desire to show top-line revenue growth or market share gains. If those numbers aren’t being hit organization-wide, media is often the fastest way to ramp up. For example, it can take months to scale a sales team, whereas ramping ad spend is fast and doesn’t potentially bloat the company’s head count.

Did you know that among the 551 Rx brands that PranifyRx tracks, 367 made payments to physicians totaling over $3.1 billion in 2020 for things such as research, meals, travel, gifts, or speaking fees. For certain categories (e.g. Oncology) this can mean up to $300 million in annual HCP payments by a single brand. The average amount per brand declined 20% in 2020 to $8 million per brand. That’s a healthy-sized potential bucket of incremental media budget to tap into.

(Note: while this HCP spend data can be found in CMS Open Payments database via the Sunshine Act, it’s a huge dataset, and you can’t filter by category or condition. If you want a simple interface that enriches the data and that you can actually use on a regular computer or even your phone, PranifyRx users can login to their dashboard and click the HCP tab to get physician-level data segmented by category, condition, brand etc.)

2. Prepare and request your incremental budget before it’s offered.

Have your search strategists and display planners include incremental budget opportunity in their bi-weekly reporting throughout the year. Incremental can become available at any point in the year, and it often goes to the agency teams that already have a clear idea of how much they can spend effectively.

3. Estimate ROI using an Rx-script lift partner

Crossix, IQVIA and Lasso can all help you measure script-lift from your paid media campaigns, so that you can confidently forecast ROI before the next round of incremental budget is up for grabs.

4. Know how your brand stacks up to the competition, and where the gaps are.

You can use solutions like MediaRadar, Pathmatics, Kantar etc. to estimate competitive ad spend. While this spend data isn’t always accurate and requires time and resources to get the data in a usable format, directional data may be all you need, and your team might have the time and resources to make these tools work for you. If so, use them!

5. Have fun with it.

If you’ve done the work to set-up script-lift measurement and you’re tracking competitor creative across channels so you can identify gaps where your brand is falling short, then now is the time to give your team the opportunity to take a leadership position. Don’t just heavy-up on high ROI activities. Also use the incremental request to include innovative pharma-first tactics, since you’re already a pro at engaging in strategic conversations that empower your client and PRT to collaborate effectively.

What’s your perspective?

What Pharma Brands Can Learn from the Amazon & Macy’s Brand Ad Hijacking Lawsuit

If Amazon gets the Macy’s flagship billboard in Herald Square, this could be the greatest example of brand hijacking to-date. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/29/business/macys-billboard-amazon.html

“…the negative impact of allowing a “direct competitor” to promote itself from a block that has long been associated with Macy’s “would be immeasurable.”

“The damages to Macy’s customer good will, image, reputation and brand should a prominent online retailer (especially Amazon) advertise on the billboard are impossible to calculate,” Macy’s said in the complaint.”

That is ad hijacking IRL.

On Google, marketers monitor and attempt to protect their brand from ad hijacking with competitive blocking bid strategies on key brand and category terms. Industry tools exist to assist with this, but they aren’t as easy to use as simply doing a quick Google search on 1-2 of your most important to check if your brand is protected right now.

For Rx pharma brands, there’s a drawback: most Rx ads are labeled “prescription treatment website” instead of the brand domain, so your teams have to click on the ad to confirm it’s yours in the top spot. Those clicks waste ad budget: millions of dollars/year.

Enter the PranifyRx Google Chrome Extension for Pharma marketers. It’s the only way to reveal which Rx brands are in top position when you conduct a search without having to waste ad budget by clicking the brand-connected ads.

Pharma marketers can get an invitation to download the PranifyRx Chrome Extension for free here:

How Are Cardiovascular Rx Brands Establishing Category Leadership In 2021?

February is American Heart Month. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women in the U.S. Each year 715,000 Americans suffer from a heart attack and 600,000 die of heart disease.

Cardiovascular Rx category leaders like Novartis’ Entresto, Takeda’s Takhzyro and AZ’s Brilinta know that Feb/March is a peak period for heart disease-related search interest, and they are leveraging advertising channels like Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Display and TV advertising heading into this key window of opportunity to educate patients and healthcare professionals and help reduce the fatal effects of heart disease.

PranifyRx tracks 12 Cardiovascular Rx brands currently in-market with advertising in February, including:

• 230 live Facebook ads

• 59 live Instagram ads

• 8 live Twitter ads

• Display and TV spots

The 2021 Cardiovascular Digital Ad Report from PranifyRx reveals:

• Which brands are leveraging each channel - plus programmatic tech partners shown by brand to inform your media plans and prepare you to leverage incremental budget opportunity.

• Creative & messaging strategies with insights broken down by brand & channel - to inform your ad messaging optimization strategy

• Category Patent Expirations & Brand Lifestage Analysis - to drive your search and social bidding strategies to maximize reach, prevent artificial bidding wars & minimize cost-per-click escalation

PranifyRx is for innovators in pharma marketing who seek superior, first-look ad intelligence to enable creative and media strategies that drive category leadership.

Sign up here for first-look access to weekly updates on New Advertisers, New Creative Launches, Messaging Themes, Bidding Strategy Shifts and more through the end of March when the Cardiovascular Category peak period concludes until 2H 2021.

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