The healthcare marketing landscape has hit a genuine inflection point. Digital ad spending in healthcare and pharma is forecast to reach $26.2 billion in 2026, compared to just $6.9 billion for traditional channels.¹ That gap is not a trend on the horizon — it is the reality of today's omnichannel marketplace. For agencies and marketers focused on reaching healthcare professionals (HCPs), patients, or both, the question is no longer whether to go digital. The question is which channels to prioritize, and how to activate them with the precision your audience demands. At Redi-Data, we have spent decades building the healthcare data infrastructure that makes every channel smarter. Our identity solution on LiveRamp, backed by over 14 million proven HCP records, powers targeting across social media, programmatic display, mobile, audio, video, and television. Whether you need a ready-to-launch segment to go live today or a fully custom audience built from ICD-10, CPT claims, and Rx prescribing data, Redi-Data Digital® is designed to activate every channel you will read about below. Here are the five digital channels every healthcare marketer should have on their radar in 2026, and how Redi-Data can help you put them to work. 1. Connected TV (CTV): The Biggest Screen, the Biggest Opportunity If there is one channel that defines healthcare digital marketing in 2026, it is Connected TV. CTV advertising serves your creative directly to viewers on Smart TVs, streaming devices such as Roku and Amazon Fire TV, and gaming consoles like Xbox and PlayStation. With an estimated 88% of US households now owning at least one CTV-enabled device,² this channel delivers the mass reach of broadcast television alongside the targeting precision that digital marketers have always wanted from it. Healthcare marketers are taking notice in a significant way. Local healthcare ad spend on CTV/OTT is expected to reach $353 million in 2026, reflecting a 10.9% compound annual growth rate from 2024.³ The broader healthcare and pharma market is following suit: in the 2026 MM+M/Inmar Healthcare Marketers Trend Report, Connected TV was among the fastest-growing budget categories, with brands projecting a 60% year-over-year increase in CTV spending.⁴ Meanwhile, 88% of adults who regularly visit the doctor for check-ups are already ad-supported CTV viewers — a compelling data point for any campaign targeting health-active consumers.³ Beyond reach, CTV solves a challenge that has plagued digital marketers for years. As third-party cookies phase out across major browsers, CTV uses IP-based and AdID-based targeting rather than cookie-dependent methods. This privacy-centric approach keeps your campaigns compliant while maintaining the audience precision you need. How Redi-Data activates it: Redi-Data is 100% CTV-enabled. Our healthcare audiences are available across premium streaming partners, including Hulu, Disney, NBCUniversal, Samsung Ads, A+E Networks, and The Weather Channel, among others. With one campaign setup, your message reaches audiences watching live sports, award shows, or their favorite binge-worthy series — wherever they are streaming. Programmatic buys through real-time bidding make it possible to reach the right viewer at the right moment, with no wasted spend on audiences outside your target. Discover Redi-Data CTV 2. Programmatic Display and Video Advertising Programmatic advertising has become the backbone of modern healthcare digital campaigns. Automated, real-time bidding enables your brand to serve display, banner, and video ads across millions of websites and apps, reaching the right individual at precisely the right moment. For healthcare marketers working to reach HCPs during the research and consideration phases of their prescribing decisions, programmatic offers a level of deterministic, one-to-one targeting that no other channel can match at scale. Video completion rates on CTV and programmatic video average between 92% and 97%,⁵ making it a format that commands far more attention than standard display alone. Contextual targeting adoption has also grown significantly, rising two to three times between 2022 and 2025, as marketers adapt their strategies to a post-cookie environment.⁵ Programmatic also brings operational efficiency that agencies value. Campaigns can launch quickly, budgets can be adjusted in real time, and performance data flows back fast enough to optimize mid-flight. For healthcare brands with tight windows around product launches, clinical milestones, or seasonal prescribing patterns, that speed and flexibility is a measurable advantage. How Redi-Data activates it: Redi-Data Digital® powers programmatic and social media activation with advanced, de-identified data built on our identity graph of over 14 million HCP records. Custom segments allow you to curate your reach using proprietary data, including ICD-10 codes, CPT claims submissions, and prescription Rx information. Every audience is built with completely de-identified Personally Identifiable Information (PII) to ensure your campaigns remain compliant. You can activate across multiple devices and channels from a single data source, eliminating the fragmentation that drives up costs and reduces efficiency. Explore Programmatic and Social Media 3. Social Media Advertising for Healthcare Social media has moved well beyond consumer branding for healthcare and pharma. According to a comprehensive healthcare marketing analysis published in 2026, 98% of healthcare marketers in the United States use Facebook as part of their strategy, and over 60% of healthcare marketers increased their investment in social media campaigns in 2025.¹ Platforms including LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram now offer the reach, the audience targeting tools, and the ad formats needed to engage both patients and HCPs at meaningful scale. Perhaps the most striking data point for agencies considering social: in 2025, social media advertising surpassed linear TV in healthcare and pharma for the first time.⁶ That shift reflects a fundamental change in where healthcare professionals and health-conscious consumers spend their attention. Among pharma respondents in one recent study, 77.4% planned to increase social media use for HCP engagement.¹ Social has moved from a consumer awareness channel into a professional engagement channel, and budgets are shifting accordingly. For agencies managing multiple healthcare clients, social also offers meaningful efficiency gains. Campaigns can be customized by specialty, geography, prescribing behavior, or patient condition, and the same underlying data that drives a programmatic buy can power a social activation without starting from scratch. How Redi-Data activates it: Redi-Data Digital® supports social media activation across major platforms using the same identity-graph-powered segments that drive your programmatic campaigns. This means a single healthcare audience can be activated across channels simultaneously, giving your campaigns consistent reach whether a physician is reading clinical literature online or scrolling through their LinkedIn feed. Ready-to-launch segments are instantly available on all major data collaboration platforms for fast deployment to activation partners. Explore Programmatic and Social Media 4. Programmatic Audio Digital audio has quietly become one of the fastest-growing programmatic inventory types, and healthcare marketers are only beginning to tap its potential. Podcast listeners, music streaming subscribers, and digital radio audiences consume content in environments where they are fully engaged, often without the screen-based distractions that reduce display ad attention. Programmatic audio now represents roughly four to seven percent of total programmatic budgets, with growth continuing as more healthcare brands recognize the intimacy and engagement this channel delivers.⁵ For HCP marketing in particular, audio offers a compelling environment. Physicians and nurses often listen to podcasts and streaming audio during commutes, exercise, and downtime — moments when they are open to educational or brand-relevant messaging. Unlike visual formats, audio ads are consumed without the ability to scroll past or minimize a window. Completion rates are high, and audience targeting through programmatic audio mirrors what is available in display and video, meaning your existing healthcare data segments can transfer directly to this channel. Audio also pairs well with other channels in a coordinated omnichannel strategy. A healthcare professional who hears an audio ad about a therapeutic class and then encounters a retargeted display ad or social post encounters your brand message multiple times across different contexts, which consistently drives higher recall and conversion. How Redi-Data activates it: Redi-Data Digital® supports audio activation as part of a broader omnichannel approach. The same custom and ready-to-launch segments that power display and video campaigns can be applied to audio inventory, enabling consistent, cross-channel messaging without rebuilding your audience from scratch. Whether you want to reach physicians by specialty, target consumers managing a specific condition, or combine both audiences in a coordinated campaign, the data infrastructure is already in place. Build a Custom Segment 5. Mobile Advertising (In-App and Web) Mobile is not a new channel, but it is a rapidly evolving one — and it remains essential to any serious omnichannel healthcare strategy in 2026. Smartphones are the primary device through which HCPs and patients access health information, pharmaceutical resources, and clinical decision tools. In-app display accounts for more than 70% of all mobile programmatic impressions,⁵ and in-app advertising on mobile generates click-through rates 7.5 times higher than standard display ads when delivered in video format.⁷ The scale of mobile engagement also reinforces its value. The average smartphone user interacts with their device over 2,600 times daily, creating a high volume of opportunities to connect with your target audience.⁸ For healthcare marketers, mobile advertising in endemic and non-endemic app environments allows for highly specific targeting — reaching a cardiologist while they are consulting a clinical reference app, or engaging a patient managing a chronic condition through a health tracking tool. Privacy-safe, deterministic mobile targeting has also matured. Mobile AdID-based segments now provide an alternative to cookie-dependent approaches, aligning well with the same privacy-forward methodology that makes CTV targeting effective. The result is a channel with strong reach, strong engagement, and a growing set of tools for healthcare compliance. How Redi-Data activates it: Redi-Data Digital® includes mobile as part of its omnichannel activation capabilities. Ready-to-launch segments covering healthcare, consumer, and business audiences can be deployed across mobile environments quickly, using the same identity-resolution infrastructure that powers all other channels. For campaigns that require more precision, custom segments built on NPI-level data, prescribing behavior, or patient condition allow you to reach exactly the audience you need, on the device they use most. Explore Ready-to-Launch Segments The Case for Omnichannel Activation Each of these five channels has real, measurable value on its own. But their strongest results come when they work together. An omnichannel approach that reaches the same healthcare professional or patient across CTV, programmatic display, social, audio, and mobile reinforces your message at multiple points in the decision-making journey. Consistent cross-channel exposure drives higher recall, greater brand trust, and ultimately, stronger ROI. The data supports this direction emphatically. Digital formats are projected to account for 82% of healthcare ad budgets by 2027, with social, display, and connected TV leading the charge.¹ Healthcare marketers who invest in building robust, data-driven omnichannel campaigns today will be better positioned to capture audience attention and demonstrate attribution as the channel landscape continues to mature. The foundation of effective omnichannel marketing is data quality. Without a reliable, verified audience to activate, even the best channel strategy produces mediocre results. Redi-Data has spent decades building and maintaining the healthcare data that makes every channel smarter, from AMA-sourced physician records and independently audited email data to prescription Rx claims, ICD-10 codes, and state-licensed professional lists spanning nurses, pharmacists, mental health professionals, and more. Ready to Activate? Redi-Data Digital® gives agencies and marketers the data infrastructure to activate all five of these channels under one roof. Whether you want to launch quickly with a ready-to-launch segment, build a precision audience with a custom segment, or bring your campaign to the big screen with Connected TV, our team is ready to help you connect the right data to the right channels. Contact a Redi-Data representative today to get started. Contact Us | 973-227-4380 | sales@redidata.com Bibliography Footnotes

1. Revenue Memo. "Healthcare Marketing Statistics for 2026: A Comprehensive Analysis." RevenueMemo.com, April 18, 2026. https://www.revenuememo.com/p/healthcare-marketing-statistics ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
2. Redi-Data. "The Power of CTV." Redi-Data Digital — CTV, 2026. https://www.redidata.com/redi-data-digital/ctv/ (citing Statista, CTV penetration rate USA, 2024) ↩
3. PREMION. "How Healthcare Is Powering Up CTV Investment." Premion.com, April 14, 2025. https://premion.com/news/how-healthcare-is-powering-up-ctv-investment/ (citing BIA's U.S. Local Advertising Forecast and MRI-Simmons November 2024 Cord Evolution Study) ↩ ↩²
4. MM+M / Inmar Intelligence. "Healthcare Marketers Trend Report 2026: Digital Ad Spend Overtakes Linear TV." MM+M Online, May 2026. https://www.mmm-online.com/features/healthcare-marketers-trend-report-2026-digital-ad-spend-overtakes-linear-tv/ ↩
5. Marketing LTB. "Programmatic Advertising Statistics 2026: 91+ Stats and Insights." MarketingLTB.com, May 2026. https://marketingltb.com/blog/statistics/programmatic-advertising-statistics/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
6. Outcomes Rocket. "Digital Marketing in Healthcare: Tools and Tactics for B2B Growth." OutcomesRocket.com, March 28, 2026. https://www.outcomesrocket.com/blogs/digital-marketing-in-healthcare-guide ↩
7. Smaato, as cited in Health Union. "The HCP Marketing Pro's Guide to Digital Healthcare Advertising." Health-Union.com, 2026. https://health-union.com/blog/the-hcp-marketing-pros-guide-to-digital-healthcare-advertising/ ↩
8. Redi-Data. "Every Minute Matters." Redi-Data Digital, 2026. https://www.redidata.com/redi-data-digital/ ↩