This year, PatientView elected to not include historical charts in their Reputation of Pharma press releases. Luckily we have followed this data from the company for a long time and keep a running tally. Adding the global data to the US breakout (this story) we get this chart:

We can see that in 2025 when patient organizations were asked their opinions the US fell by 8% while the global average climbed by 1%. When looking at other countries we can see that some have much more affinity for pharma.

And while we're at it, here are the top 10 countries for number of patient associations.

Reminder that the full charts are available from the author by replying to this email.

Emarketer has an entire report titled "US Digital Health 2026" for subscribers and as a teaser they released a chart about trust in ad channels. 2,087 respondents indicated the two channels they found most trustworthy for healthcare ads.

Search beat out the medical office in the study, though it's within the margin of error.

Even so, tying with the physician's office is an amazing result for search engines. And let's face it, "search" mostly means Google (sorry, Bing). Google also shows AI overviews 89% of the time for health queries, so GEO is important and an opportunity for the pharma website to move from the bottom of the list to the top in one jump.

The full report is, as you might guess, very interesting. Klick subscribes to Emarketer so hit up your rep if you want a briefing or reply to this email. Sorry, competitors, this offer is for pharma subscribers only (wise -Ed.).

Reach3 surveyed 1,043 American adults using their text-based combination qualitative and quantitative technology. They found that health app and device usage has stabilized since 2024 at 71% and 64%, respectively.

In their data the researchers found that app and device usage was in three popular cases but that they varied by age.

For those who use health apps and devices, it's all about the data. They want those data to show progress (or not) and to motivate them to continue. 

Social Media Examiner has released a substantial overview of the channel based on a survey of 840 social marketers. The survey was technically global but ended up with 63% of respondents in the US. 5% were in healthcare. 

Marketers were asked about their social campaigns' performance and different platforms excelled for different results. 

While reach is good across the board for social platforms, traffic is a bit harder to come by. Likewise, sales (B2C) and leads (B2B) are lower still and have different best platforms. 

As an extension of that last chart, respondents also had different most-used platforms. This chart is all usage so there are still robust numbers for the secondary platforms.

When the answer was limited to only one "top" pick, the differences become more extreme.

83% of marketers are using AI at least weekly, and most are using it daily. 

If you feel overwhelmed by the speed and scope of change in business since November, 2022 you're not alone. The question about being overwhelmed was presented directly after those on AI so it was likely part of the same set. 67% said "heck yeah."

Ok six charts is more than enough for one Wire story. The full report has 44 pages with data on nearly every one. If you want to know what other cross-industry marketers are doing with social grab a copy.

A new study commissioned by St. Jude Children's Hospital started with qualitative interviews and then a survey of 2,501 U.S. adults in March. It asked about Americans' views on hope. 

When asked what suffers when they feel hopeless, many of the issues could show up in work tasks.

We're presenting this as a cause-effect relationship but in reality it's more concurrent than causal. Still, there's no denying that many of these effects are going to affect work performance.

When asked what makes them feel hopeful about the future, the top answer was acts of kindness. There were other items as well that might resonate with pharma marketers.

This is exemplified by Klick's donation of 1,600 surgeries in Kenya in honor of employees during the holiday gift season. Check it out for yet another reason to reach out to Klick.

A new report from The Video Advertising Bureau (VAB) looks at how ads are working their way into all forms of streaming TV viewing. It starts with how many current devices are "smart."

This is not surprising as data last year showed that 92% of all TVs sold in the US are "smart."

The report also includes how many of these devices have ads (spoiler: nearly all). The number that have ads on the TV home screen (where the user selects apps) is approaching 100%.

With 2.5 smart TVs per household they represent good potential reach. 

Interested in this channel? Klick's TV specialists know both traditional and streaming TV buys (promotional but relevant, I'll accept it -Ed.).

The reason Cumulus published this study was to show how Americans are commuting to work in large numbers again and so radio is a viable channel. However, the study they used was for marketing professionals and that is interesting in and of itself.

When asked how many days they work from the office, nearly two-thirds say 4+ (most or all). 

When asked how many days they are working in the office the numbers seem to continue to rise with nearly 10% saying more than five. And this is in-office, not from home.

Megababe surveyed 503 US women to see how they really feel. Mostly, they're not fine but don't want to say it. 

Highlighting the seriousness of the "I'm Fine" epidemic. That number goes up to 54% for 4+ hours.

Reinforcing the "mom as health gatekeeper" meme, the family gets first ranking in people that women prioritize over themselves.

Last week Google released a document that tried to say "don't worry, SEO is already GEO/AEO." The industry looked at it and said "yes... and."

The points in the Google document were divided into dos and don'ts (lists generated by ChatGPT):

However, industry veterans were quick to point out that the guidance may be overly simplistic for marketers dealing with the full ecosystem of GenAI systems. Some of the points brought up by SEO experts:

Klick's search teams (paid and organic) have been following this for years. Klick clients can talk to their reps to ensure they are covered.

This study is from April 9 but is particularly relevant because of the reports of massive boos in commencement speeches whenever AI is mentioned. 

Regardless of how they feel about the technology, Gen Z is increasingly using AI with 51% using the technology weekly or more often.

Year over year the researchers at Gallup found that "excited" decreased 14% and "anger" increased 9%.

Just because they don't like it doesn't mean they don't understand it. Gen Z students are increasingly aware they will need to use AI post graduation and they are even changing college majors because of it.

What does Gen Z have to do with us in pharma marketing? We still need talent in our pipeline or we will suffer in 10 years' time. 

If you read the Bridge GenAI Lab article quickly you could think that advertising on an LLM changes the actual results, but that is not true. The researchers do expose this limitation in the introduction to the paper but if the reader glosses over it they will get a mistaken impression of the results.

The researchers claim their experiment showed:

The wording of this put our Spidey Senses™ on alert. Do LLMs actually inject paid content into the system prompt? OpenAI says no.

So, when someone breathlessly wants to alert you that doctors are going to be misled by "ads in LLMs" you'll be prepared to debunk this paper.

Maybe our interpretation of this paper's basic premise isn't correct. If that's the case we invite the authors to contact us (just reply to this email) with clarifying information.

A study from Perion is based on a relatively small survey of 111 marketers that manage over $5 million in spend. The questions dealt measurement and creative optimization.

The top triggers for refreshing creative are metrics that show up when it's already too late. 

To add delay to the process, two of the top metrics on which many marketers rely are inherently laggy (not a word -Ed.).

The top channel for clearest measurement is social according to these marketers. It's also one of the fastest channels for measurement (on-platform metrics, at least). 

While most marketers in this study wait for slow metrics before revising creative that doesn't have to be your brand. Optimize on Social and then migrate messaging to other channels.