The DHC and Sermo conducted a RealTime survey (no "n" value was provided and it is typically US doctors) to investigate the current state of AI in the medical exam room. 

They found that it's already there and is changing the conversations between physicians and their patients.

Not every patient is coming in convinced they need therapy X based on an AI search... but enough are that half of doctors say they are seeing this behavior "occasionally" or more often. Note this is actual therapy requests, not just AI condition or symptom information.

It looks like the AI tools are finding reasonable information online. When asked about the quality of the AI information that patients arrive with, the results skew decidedly towards higher quality.

Yes, there is "some misleading" information in the mix, but that is also true of non-AI information on the Web. So, really, these results are a win for AI.

Doctors are generally ok with Pharma information on the internet as they feel that it's accurate even if it may be selective toward a branded therapy. With this in mind we can see that half are comfortable with patients getting AI "disease education that is sponsored by a pharmaceutical company (and disclosed)."

This isn't surprising, but another study has shown that the family doctor is the most trusted source of health information. Below that are the HCP associations and then the scientists in the government agencies.

Email is still an important channel for brand and performance marketing in 2026. This story from Emarketer is a collection of data from various sources linked there. Here, we are just going to provide the data.

Like browsers, Google also dominates email clients but Outlook is still a substantial second place.

AI's use in email marketing starts with content creation. It is making inroads in targeting and analytics but copy and images are the main uses.

If you want them to click, tell them. That seems to be the message when looking at techniques used to improve engagement. The other interactive elements sound intriguing though, a weekly Wire quiz anyone?

If you're looking to get rid of those pesky subscribers, just spam them with low-value content. 40% of people say they unsubscribe from some emails weekly, and spam will put you first on their list.

Why do marketers keep coming back to email? ROI. It is listed as the best ROI by the largest number of marketers... but it has tough competition for that top spot.

The folks over at Growtika used website visit data from Ahrefs to see how Google's AI Overviews are affecting visits. The results they found are substantial and show an extra strain on already-stressed news and information outlets.

Some news outlets were down by 97% from their peak traffic since February 2024. The researchers also included Healthline in the data so we included it with the tech news outlets.

This data is cherry-picked from the highest traffic between Feb 2024 and Jan 2026 so all it really shows is that Jan 2026 is never the highest traffic. 

However, when we look at the traffic trend data we see that there does seem to be a consistent, industry-wide, reduction in traffic after Google rolled out AI Overviews. Calculating the average of all outlets we get a 40% reduction across the entire range (not at peak).

The Healthline numbers did not have their monthlies disclosed. Also, we can see that Google started rolling out AI Overviews in the US in May of 2024 and took to the end of the year to expand them globally.

All of this adds up to the importance of GEO for website owners especially since AI Overviews are common for health searches (82% in one study).

The title of this story is a bit on the nose because MailChimp has obvious selection-bias in this study. The survey was on 2,005 respondents who are marketing professionals in small companies (11-500 employees) and who currently use email marketing tools.

To see the selection bias in action, here are the channels that the respondents use:

Don't get us wrong, the Klick Wire email newsletter is unapologetically pro-email. However, we don't like such obvious selection bias.

The reason this report made it into the Wire is the data on AI usage. Email marketers are using AI in large numbers, both creative- and analytics-based systems.

Respondents of this study report seeing benefits of AI not just in efficiency but increased customer satisfaction, likely due to better targeting (conjecture -Ed.).

This MM+M feature looks at three AI tools brought to market for pharma projects. The one from Klick Health is Guardrail. Our approach is to speed up workflows by improving quality and reducing churn.

Some stats from initial product case studies:

OpenEvidence is providing an AI-enhanced communication suite to all verified US healthcare professionals for free. This offering will definitely resonate with doctors and the tactic reminds us of Doximity's DocDefender that it provided free of charge. 

The ability to have custom caller ID names and numbers, automated messaging, and other tools connected with the OpenEvidence suite provides a compelling draw for a tool already being used by 40% of US physicians.

Consumers were asked about the retail online experience and how quickly they thought GenAI would be adopted for various tasks. These results ignore "never" so don't take them as absolute.

Of interest to health marketers is that the use of GenAI search is predicted to become mainstream by 2027. This affects all brand marketing since behaviors for one decision (retail) can influence how other decisions are made (health).

IQVIA has a teaser page up for a paid report (though it's only $250) on global medicine forecasts. In it there are a couple of interesting charts.

This is the expected growth in spending to 2030. As typical, the US drives approximately half of that spend.

This chart is CAGR from 2020-2025 on the vertical axis and 2026-2030 on the horizontal. Size of circle is size of market. Of note is the break in the horizontal scale and its jump to 90% from 15%.

In other words, IQVIA sees explosive growth in the obesity market over the next five years.

Goodfirms surveyed 363 global professionals with little targeting. The respondents were from 15 industries in 25 countries and skewed smaller, owners, and in marketing services but included many others as well.

100% of respondents had heard of LLMs and 88% had already adopted them into their workflows. None indicated they were not at least planning to use them.

Respondents indicated they use LLMs for many aspects of marketing, starting with creative but also including targeting and analytics.

Content and creative is the biggest benefit of LLMs, but again they show their power through the entire business. 

The survey also asked respondents what concerns they have with using LLMs in their work. The answers covered the main ground around LLMs in general.

This survey shows mainly that businesses of all types are aware of and engaging LLMs, at least in the audience Goodfirms can reach.

A new report from Health Union and Solli takes input from over 50 pharma brand marketing professionals and looks at their plans for 2026. 

The study is a small "n" but still, four in five marketers are either holding or increasing their budgets for 2026. 

With 68% of respondents moving away from generalized search toward more personalized platforms the ability to accurately define the audience becomes critical. 77% say this personalization is Very Important.

But when asked about the main barrier* to this personalization, regulations rather than data rises to the top. 

* We are interpreting this question as single-answer because the percentages total exactly 100%. If respondents could select as many as they wanted we expect all three top answers would be much higher.

This report from Adobe has substantial selection bias in the sample. It claims that 49% of US citizens use TikTok for search. That seems unlikely when 44.5% of the entire population uses the platform (page 508). The discrepancy likely comes from the demographics of the survey of 807 US consumers.

Here, we compare their stated demographics with the US averages.

Regardless of the bias in the study sample, the ages of those who have ever used TikTok for search make more sense.

Regardless of how many Americans have ever used TikTok for search, Google is still the place where consumers go for quality results. When asked which platforms were most "helpful" Google wins by a country mile.

Reddit makes a surprise showing in second place here, highlighting the strength of the community-oriented platform.