The pharmaceutical industry faces significant uncertainty as the new administration considers tighter restrictions on direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising. While formal rules have yet to emerge, recent listening sessions hosted by the Justice Department, FTC, Department of Commerce, and HHS in June and July 2025 are primarily focused on lowering Americans’ drug prices through competition, including generic and biosimilar availability and formulary reforms, rather than solely regulating DTC advertising.

Effective July 1st, 2025, Google now permits certified pharmaceutical advertisers to engage U.S. HCPs on a one-to-one basis via NPI-based Customer Match lists and cookie-based remarketing across Search, YouTube, and DV360. The change is codified in updates to Google’s Health in Personalized Ads and Restricted Drug Terms policies. This overturns a decade-long restriction that forced marketers to rely solely on contextual signals. SSCG was instrumental in making this new offering a reality for the industry, working closely with Google’s Senior Leadership Health team last year behind the scenes to showcase the need for this new capability and the impact it would have on advertisers in the pharma/healthcare industry.

Search is transforming rapidly across the healthcare landscape, bringing both risk and opportunity for brands aiming to engage consumers and HCPs. As AI platforms condense health information into zero-click summaries and search behaviors expand across engines, social platforms, and communities, visibility is harder to earn and more critical than ever. To stay ahead, marketers must treat search as a behavior, not a channel, by embracing AI-optimized content, engaging authentically within communities, and tailoring strategies to both consumer and HCP ecosystems before they fall behind.

As the opportunities for marketing transformation rapidly advance, driven by personalization and AI-enhanced omnichannel precision, pharmaceutical companies are navigating one of the most volatile and disrupted landscapes the industry has ever faced. Against the backdrop of a potential federal ban on DTC advertising and tax reform proposals that could restrict advertising deductions, the rapid dismantling of the FDA—combined with looming pharmaceutical tariffs—has fractured the commercial environment. These converging pressures not only introduce new risks around drug approvals, compliance, cost, and campaign timing, but also demand a bold reexamination of how trust, value, and agility are delivered in today’s marketplace.

As AI redefines the digital landscape, brands must adapt to Bot Marketing 2.0—an era shaped by generative AI and large language models (LLMs). Unlike traditional search, where content optimization followed clear signals and yielded measurable feedback, today’s AI systems function as black boxes with little transparency or attribution. This shift is compressing the customer journey into AI-assisted decision loops, with platforms like Perplexity emerging as early disruptors. To stay competitive, brands must rethink how they structure content, engage consumers, and measure performance in an increasingly opaque and accelerated environment.

The healthcare marketing landscape is shifting faster than ever—and the change is irreversible. Between tightening regulations, the decline of traditional DTC tactics, and a fractured media environment, brands can no longer rely on yesterday’s playbook. What’s needed now is a bold reimagining of how we engage. Healthcare brands must now create meaningful, human-centered connections that move beyond awareness—to build trust, inspire action, and drive lasting impact. In this piece, experts from across the Omnicom network unpack five urgent realities—and why experience is quickly becoming healthcare’s most powerful tool for connection, credibility, and long-term success.

SSCG Media Group, through its proprietary panel of healthcare professionals, MAP MD™ , Double-Edged Scroll surveyed 150 pediatricians in June 2024, to assess the impact social media has on the mental health of children. According to the survey results, social media has been noted as one of the main topics being linked to mental health discussions with children by 78% of pediatricians. Some of the biggest risks being observed as it relates to mental health and social media include body image, cyberbullying, depression and anxiety.

SSCG Media Group is devoted to discovering valuable insights that empower our clients to effectively target healthcare professionals with impactful messages, driving positive outcomes in patient care. Our proprietary research tool, MAP MD™, enables us to identify the ideal timing, location, and delivery method for pharma messages. Additionally, we have honed our ability to pinpoint the messages that will most effectively resonate with HCPs throughout a brand’s lifecycle. While the industry has prioritized continuously delivering the “right messages at the right time in the right place,” our latest data reveals that this is no longer sufficient to truly differentiate a brand in the complex omnichannel landscape. It has us asking what’s next when we’ve been doing everything right? According to the Map MD™ results, there are five critical factors that must be considered when educating healthcare professionals about pharmaceutical products. These include…

In the fourth quarter of 2021, SSCG Media Group surveyed over 3000 healthcare professionals across 20 specialties to assess the impact the pandemic continues to impose on how HCPs gather information, engage with content, and connect with patients. This survey strives to identify the best ways to engage HCPs as they navigate the current health landscape. The specialties surveyed include allergy/immunology, cardiology, dermatology, emergency medicine, endocrinology, gastroenterology, hematology/oncology, hospital pharmacy, infectious disease, nephrology, neurology, nurse practitioners, obstetrics & gynecology, oncology nurses, ophthalmology, pediatrics, primary care, psychiatry, pulmonology, and rheumatology. These findings suggest that….