Healthcare organizations, especially health systems, have a large, untapped opportunity to use their clinical expertise and reputation to serve health media (medically validated, contextually relevant content, including advertising) to engage, support, and educate consumers. The health media trend is accelerating concurrently with healthcare organizations’ efforts to boost digital engagement with consumers as they engage with their care—for example, through a more sophisticated digital front door and personalized marketing efforts (moving beyond billboards).1
A few leading healthcare organizations are actively participating in the nascent health media market (a natural extension of a broader retail media trend2). They are developing and serving their own content, sourcing content from health content providers, or serving advertising-supported content including ads and sponsored content on their channels (digitally and nondigitally). Examples include the following:
- Cleveland Clinic has an extensive library of content about specific diseases and conditions published alongside ads on its website.3
- Kaiser Permanente enables members to download a variety of self-care apps that have been evaluated by its clinicians.4
- Mayo Clinic sells over-the-counter health products5 and offers advertising-supported content on diseases and conditions, healthy lifestyle, and other topics.6
- Northwell Health announced plans to launch a studio to develop scripted and nonscripted content.7
With a methodical approach, many more health systems and other healthcare organizations could unlock consumer value while maintaining ethical integrity (for example, not engaging with remnant advertising inventory solutions or networks). The number of unique visitors to healthcare company websites continues to grow year over year,8 with further opportunity to accelerate. According to McKinsey analysis, a $10 billion health system could achieve a $50 million to $65 million contribution margin run rate within five years through health and wellness–sponsored placements (for example, in email, websites, and apps) across the end-to-end consumer healthcare journey.9
In an even more ambitious play, traditional and nontraditional healthcare organizations could come together to build a collaborative ecosystem that empowers consumers with mobile apps, educational resources, and convenient access points to preventive care, wellness programs, and basic healthcare services. These products and services could improve accessibility, efficiency, and convenience for consumers and empower them to take a more active role in managing their health.
Consumers gravitate toward trusted sources of content
Health and wellness content plays a vital role in building upfront awareness and boosting retention by promoting engagement; 75 percent of respondents to a 2024 consumer survey said they connect with health and wellness content at least once a week across a variety of channels.10 For example, when searching for healthcare information, 56 percent of surveyed consumers reported using Google, 52 percent relied on community recommendations, and 43 percent used social media.11
However, lack of trust and high rates of misinformation are issues, indicated by the following:
- Although approximately 60 percent of US adults have watched health-related videos online, only about 40 percent of them expressed a high level of trust in the information provided.12
- About 30 to 40 percent of posts about diseases, diets, or medical treatments shared on social media contain misinformation.13
Despite being flooded with misinformation, savvy consumers still gravitate toward information from trusted sources. For example, 77 percent of respondents to a 2024 survey look for health and wellness content that has been clinician-reviewed.14
Increasing engagement with content could help engender consumer loyalty, which is rising in importance as price transparency rules and rising out-of-pocket expenses encourage more consumers to shop for care.15 In a 2023 consumer survey, 89 percent of respondents expressed a willingness to shop for care in at least one category of medical services.16
Quality content creates value for consumers and can drive growth
Engaging consumers with content such as articles and short videos could expand their access to trustworthy information and improve their overall care experiences in the healthcare industry. Moreover, advertising could unlock a diversified revenue stream for healthcare organizations and boost consumer attraction efforts.
Advertising-supported content strategies are growing in popularity across the healthcare industry. In a 2024 survey of healthcare executives, 45 percent of respondents reported they would either allow or expect to allow advertisements on owned channels (website, email, or text), with leaders most commonly seeing ads as a tool to improve consumer experience by helping consumers connect with needed services (49 percent) and find helpful information (45 percent).17
Expanding consumer access to information and care
A sizable portion of consumers already use health and wellness content as a resource for finding care: about one-third of consumers under the age of 45 used content to find a doctor within the past two years.18 In another survey, the percentage of payer members who said they value information from payer websites increased from 14 percent in 2020 to 29 percent in 2022. With no external commissions and generally higher lifetime values, payers’ websites are their highest-value sales channel.19
This trend suggests a substantial opportunity for healthcare organizations to use content marketing to differentiate themselves and generate consumer demand by optimizing marketing and improving brand perception. This could include, for example, creating a best-practice digital front door to drive growth with informative content, online scheduling, and preappointment engagement. In a 2024 consumer survey, 42 percent of respondents were somewhat or much more likely to schedule an appointment with a healthcare system if the clinician, clinic, or hospital offered relevant content and information on healthcare topics.20
This illustrates that many consumers don’t want healthcare organizations to limit their engagement to core clinical operations; they would like organizations to also focus on offering clinically valid content. In a 2024 consumer survey, 64 percent of respondents said they trust the accuracy of health and wellness content from health systems and doctors compared with only 5 percent trusting social media and blogs.21 Among surveyed respondents, health information websites are second only to health systems as a trusted source for health and wellness information, followed by medical authorities, health plans, and government agencies.22
Unlocking a diversified revenue stream through advertising
When thoughtfully executed, contextual advertising embedded in healthcare content could create a “win–win–win” scenario for consumers, healthcare organizations, and advertisers (Exhibit 1).
Consumers. The healthcare experience can be very disjointed. Consumers must stitch together the services and products they need, including primary care, insurance, medications, diagnostics, specialty care, and more. Healthcare organizations could orchestrate a more cohesive health and wellness ecosystem that uses content—including contextually relevant advertisements—to offer consumers what they need at every step. Up to 77 percent of surveyed consumers in 2024 reported finding sponsored content in their healthcare journey helpful or felt neutral about it.23
Effective advertisements could be useful and contextually relevant based on consumers’ healthcare journeys (Exhibit 2). Consumers are most receptive to receiving information when learning about their health and managing their health at home (Exhibit 3). These preferences don’t preclude healthcare organizations from pursuing contextually targeted advertisement opportunities from adjacent sectors, but these moments that matter for patients are a good place to start.
Ideally, advertisements will focus on high-quality health and wellness–related products and services with a confirmed ability to improve care outcomes (Exhibit 4).
Respecting consumer privacy is particularly important when engaging consumers. About 60 percent of surveyed consumers in 2024 indicated they would feel violated or angry if their clinical data were used to target health and wellness advertisements without their consent.24 In addition to ensuring strict adherence to data privacy regulations, health organizations can initially focus on ensuring embedded ads are relevant in the context of the channel in which they are being served (for example, a web page or email) and not on individual consumers.
Healthcare organizations. At a time when many healthcare leaders are operating in a challenging fiscal environment and navigating many uncertainties,25 contextual advertising on digital and nondigital properties could be a diversified source of revenue beyond core clinical and payer operations that could be reinvested to support their consumer-centric strategies and capability requirements.26 In a 2024 survey of healthcare organization executives, 34 percent of respondents said they want to diversify revenue.27
However, pursuing a health media strategy will be challenging for healthcare organizations. It will be critical for them to adopt a structured approach to new-business building28 and ensure the content, advertising, and access strategies meet the needs of consumers and advertisers. Most will need to develop new consumer-centric strategies with commensurate investments, including the following:
- driving consumers to organization-owned digital properties via meaningful, strategic, and targeted marketing activations
- engaging consumers with contextually relevant content at almost every point along their healthcare journey in support of core clinical experiences, such as while scheduling appointments and pre- or post-engagement
- building a 360-degree view of the consumer (stitching together both clinical and personal data) to holistically track consumer engagement, preferences, and actions, ultimately improving clinical outcomes—all while protecting privacy
- serving contextually relevant ads either by building the technical capabilities in-house and launching a direct sales team or by partnering with ad network builders that can provide a holistic solution
Advertisers. Health media could help advertisers align their brand with a targeted audience seeking relevant information. For the first time, advertisers could align their messaging with the content healthcare organizations are offering, such as a web page with guidance on treating a chronic disease or an after-care plan with reminders about needed vaccines. In a 2024 survey of healthcare advertisers, 77 percent consider marketing to consumers based on their health characteristics a top priority,29 and 43 percent of those advertisers reported difficulty reaching healthcare audiences using their current tools.30
Advertisers are excited to partner with healthcare organizations and seek brand-aligned partnerships to reach specific health-related consumer segments. In response, healthcare organizations could focus on developing advertising use cases that facilitate brand building and enable advertisers to identify subpopulations based on contextual content. To protect consumer information, privacy parameters can be sculpted based on specific experiences.
Five steps for getting started
Advertising-supported content strategies are growing in popularity among healthcare organizations. An effective approach entails five steps:
- Develop a health media strategy and build the business case to capture consumer growth (for example, attracting net new or dormant consumers who need care) by accelerating brand awareness and marketing and advertising revenue.
- Consider each step of the consumer healthcare journey and where content, advertising, and specific offers could be most beneficial.
- Establish guardrails (akin to a health media bill of ethics) to guide the strategy for folding advertising into the consumer experience. Considerations include identifying and vetting potential advertising partners and the partner model, choosing the appropriate media channel (for example, website, blog, or social), aligning on the format and features of the content or ad placement (for example, short-form articles or rich media), and defining media content and messaging (for example, branding or product-specific sponsor creative).
- Align on creating the minimum viable (lovable ) experience for consumers, focused on the highest-impact areas for your organization, the most appropriate advertising partners, and, most important, the consumer.
- Review the organization’s current state of consumer-centric capabilities (including consumer privacy guidelines), determine gaps, and identify what needs to be done to close them.
Consumers are more actively engaged than ever in the health ecosystem. They are quick to research preventions, symptoms, conditions, and treatments; they expect the information they receive to be relevant and high-quality; and they are ultrasensitive to engagement that seems overly familiar.
In other words, they show up in the healthcare space in the same ways they do in other walks of life, from home decorating to traveling to banking. Likewise, healthcare brand marketers have rising expectations of the quality of the spaces where they place their ad dollars and the precise characteristics of the consumers they seek to find there.
Healthcare organizations have an opportunity to serve the needs of consumers and advertisers to fuel consumer growth and diversify into a new noncore revenue source. A carefully considered and executed consumer-centric health media strategy could improve consumer experience and brand loyalty and fund further initiatives to expand care access and lead to better outcomes for all.
