CES 2024: The future of pharma advertising explored

CES 2024: The future of pharma advertising explored

At the 2024 CES, the Consumer Technology Association’s annual trade show, there was plenty of boasting of tech that demonstrates the ongoing shift from straight advertising to sophisticated out-of-home (OOH) media.

Leading the way were companies like Audible and Instacart, which leveled up their in-car and retail tools, respectively, in ways that may enable biopharma advertisers.

Formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show, the days-long confab typically features a boatload of gadgetry, much of it health-related. This year was no exception.

New audio era emerges

However, what especially drew attention from the health media literati were the many new digital out-of-home (DOOH) ad opportunities.

Consider Audible’s new collaboration with Mercedes-Benz and Amazon Music. In the words of the audiobook and podcast service, the brand collab could usher in a “new era” of immersive audio experiences.

Initiatives like this are important for the growth of this space, said Bryan Barletta, partner in Sounds Profitable, which provides podcast advertising and adtech education and news.

“It’s becoming more seamless now between car and home, which is good for the medium,” Barletta said. Audio — whether streaming, on-demand or broadcast — is a “resurgent area of advertising attention,” he added.

Pharma has been advertising on the radio for quite some time. The industry spent $146 million in national spot radio in 2022 and was the biggest advertiser in the channel that year, according to Vivvix data shared with Inside Radio.

Considering pharma advertisers already have a large presence in radio, there will be a “remarkable fight for companies to be in the dashboard,” predicted Charles Benaiah, founder of media firm Watzan.

Hit the road, ChatGPT

In other in-car news, Volkswagen said its vehicles will have ChatGPT pre-installed in the Passat, Tiguan, Golf as well as its electric vehicles.

CES signaled another direction of DOOH growth: retail.

The big CES mover here was Instacart. The grocery tech firm said during the convention that its AI-powered smart shopping carts — dubbed Caper Carts after a company Instacart acquired in 2021 — will begin piloting ads at certain Good Food Holdings stores in Southern California.

The shopping carts, which have a screen mounted on their handle, will display ads from launch partners including Del Monte Foods, Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream and General Mills. These will be personalized based on shoppers’ real-time behaviors or cart contents.

With the aid of sensors and historical shopping data, the algorithm will serve up recommendations based on the items being tossed in. Instacart said more retail partners are set to roll out in the months ahead.

All hail the Sphere

Major retailers weren’t the only ones raising the bar with ever more sophisticated ad tools. Of course, straight-ahead ad formats also debuted during CES.

Most notable was The Sphere — basically a very large form of DOOH which towers above an 18,000 seat Las Vegas auditorium. Ads running on the Sphere during CES took advantage of its immersive audio and video capabilities.

2023 was the year when ChatGPT leveled the AI playing field, making helpful conversational AI available to the masses. Amid the proliferating use cases for AI at CES were a parade of in-home offerings from digital health firms.

Although these aren’t OOH advertising venues per se, they have the potential to enhance the user’s understanding of their own health.