Elsevier and Reuters have partnered on a survey of 246 pharma (94%) and medtech (6%) professionals, primarily in the EU (42%), global (31%), and NA (15%). The respondents are roughly 60/40 for commercial and medical.

The report title says it all "HCP Engagement in the AI Age." It includes insights into how these professionals are approaching professional communications.

The report authors sorted the budget insights by the largest increase, 10%+, and here Social comes out on top. However, percentages are dependent on the denominator. If we look at the more crude total increase metric Social is at 59% but email edges it out with 66% of respondents saying those budgets will increase.

Lowest in the ranking was sales rep activities but even there a minority, 26%, were looking to actually reduce budgets.

The report itself focuses more on social than email and includes a list of social activities respondents are engaging with. Listening research is the top activity (83%) followed by influencer management, both KOLs and patients (52%).

AI usage amongst the respondents was almost ubiquitous with 41% working with it already and 42% considering it for the near future. Unsurprisingly, this group also thought that usage will expand over the next five years.

We have to keep in mind the context when looking at this data. This isn't HCPs saying they like AI, this is pharma professionals saying they think HCPs like AI.

This report also includes insights into what respondents look for in content, medical education budgets, and more. This laser focus on what Wire readers tend to like gives this report the much-coveted Klick Wire "Must Download" award.

Elsevier has conducted its fourth study into physicians' use of digital and social content. This report contains the results of 1,307 surveys of global physicians, 84% of who use social media weekly.

Most social use by physicians is passive following of news from important institutions and conferences. With this chart of uses we have color-coded the activities as active or passive.

The top use is trying to stay on top of the deluge of medical research. For example, PubMed increased by more than 2 million listings in the past year alone. 

While Twitter / X may have been in the top three previously, the current platforms are YouTube, WhatsApp, and LinkedIn. Ignoring WhatsApp as not really a social platform, we see that YouTube and LinkedIn have substantial weekly usage.

With YouTube at the top of the platform list it's not surprising that video has high usage. However, 82% is much higher than weekly YouTube usage so these numbers may be monthly (notice the smaller type is weekly).

All of the video physicians are watching for professional purposes relates to the information tracking we discussed earlier as physicians try to keep up with their fields.

Pharma videos are watched as well, but physicians keep in mind the interests of the pharma company when considering the information.

For marketers looking for insight into content for their HCP audiences, this report is a great resource.

One of the reasons that half of all physicians suffer from burnout is that many of them are so busy that they can't unwind. 41% of HCPs either don't take all their vacation or feel bad asking for it.

If you take the "no" answers and scale them for just that population you see that workload (the top two spots) is over 75% of the reason.

This data was gathered from organic conversations on the G-Med platform so the base of the percentages was probably the number of HCPs talking about the subject. For all the details including quotes get the full report.

IAS worked with Neuro-Insight to measure neurological reactions to ads delivered next to different TV shows: funny, emotional, and dramatic. They used ads that were unrelated to the content or which matched the tone and/or the context.

It's easy to look at this result and nod think something to the effect of "that's obvious." It may be logical but it's hard to prove and IAS with their partner should get credit for doing this work.

If advertisers can create ads that track to the content they are shown alongside they can achieve results that are more memorable and positive.

Marketers are wary of humor but it can be a major benefit... if done well. Test participants were asked what types of ads were most engaging. 

The impact for brands includes personal connection and memorability and is overall a good news story.

Most brands won't have the budgets to create content that can closely match a wide range of shows but those that can cherry pick one or two types could see improved results.

A new report from Precise TV uses data from 1,000 US teens (13-17) and their parents. If we use USA data for first births, we see that mothers would be 25 at that time which makes them between 38 and 42, on average when these kids are in the study range. Obviously, second or third children will result in somewhat older parents (rough estimate, but illustrative -Ed.).

While teens aren't a target market for pharma marketers, the report highlights that "8 in 10" parents watch content with their kids (which could be anywhere from 75% to 84%). This shows a multi-generational effect for platforms.

The base finding is that YouTube is platform number one for teens, followed closely by games. Unsurprisingly, TikTok makes a strong showing but perhaps more surprisingly is how high up Facebook remains.

YouTube also wins for having the best ads as well, though these numbers are lower and they don't total 100% so the question wasn't single choice (no one says they like ads, after all).

Note that YouTube makes two showings on this chart. Though, we don't know if they asked about Instagram and Facebook Reels.

Recall also seems to be in YouTube's favor, but this might be linked to the liking of ads as well.

So, if teens are all over YouTube, what about their parents watching with them? It turns out 70% are doing this weekly or more often.

Also, "6 in 10" of these parents remember seeing ads (again, could be anywhere from 55% to 64%). These ads have an effect though, when asked about the most recent thing they bought for their teen YouTube came out on top again.

If you're looking for data for your next YouTube deck, this resource might come in handy (too colloquial, but accurate -Ed.). Also, related but separate is YouTube's introduction of parental controls for their teens (TechCrunch).

IGN has broken an in-depth investigative reporting piece on Susan Banks, a gaming disability advocate who died in 2019. The piece isn't about her death, it's about the allegation that she never existed. 

The person identified as her romantic partner is thought to have created this account and personally benefited from donations to it. The evidence in the article is:

This story shows how anonymous individuals have been able to create fictional people in the past and highlights how much easier this might become with generative AI technologies. On the flip side, however, is that GenAI technologies might make people more skeptical of fake personas. Time will tell.

Reddit has always been a great source of technical answers but now it seems to be growing as a source of many Google queries. In this chart the "standard" value of Reddit looks like it's a little over a 100 index, so better than average, but the spike is 1,880 over index. Impressive.

Anyone interested in advertising on Reddit might find it better than historical data might predict.

UNICEF conducted a study about youth engagement in politics which has one slide related to healthcare. On the list of issues that 18-22 year-olds care about, health appears twice.

The chart is heavily compressed for this email, so the two topics related to health are: Mental Health Access and Access to Healthcare (similar but distinct). Note that the older cohort (18-22) are much more engaged here compared to the younger (14-17). 

CB Insights used its startup data to find 52 firms that look the best positioned to succeed and have a strong exit for their investors. Six of the 52 are in healthcare.

Four of these six companies are B2C, offering direct to consumer services. Healthcare is different in this respect, other industries are more B2B.

The FDA's drug evaluation group, CDER, has amalgamated all its current AI activities into one group called the AI Council. 

The council will be both outward-looking to steer policy and internal-looking to oversee the agency's own use of the technologies. 

Have a few days free? This infographic of 58 of the top AI tools for marketers comes from a detailed SEM Rush list. My top GenAI tools are mostly on the list (ChatGPT, Midjourney, Suno, Perplexity, Otter) but it lists Sora as a video generation tool which isn't publicly available yet.

The infographic is more legible on the MarketingProfs site.

A new report from Emplifi looks at how user-generated review content helps brands. The answer is a lot. 

Much of the data is relatively old, but still valid. Some of the data that seems to be new we can summarize here.

The last one is important because it allows a brand to amplify these positive user-generated comments. While this may seem like a CPG-only tactic we have used it with selected brands (don't talk about Klick projects -Ed.).