6 Take-Outs from Nielsen’s recent 2025/26 Upfronts report

The pharma industry, traditionally reliant on measured, demographic-driven advertising strategies, is at the precipice of significant transformation. Nielsen’s latest report on cross-media and audience insights underscores the imperatives for navigating an increasingly fragmented media ecosystem, offering actionable takeaways for pharma media professionals delivering their 2025-2026 campaigns.

1. Streaming and Linear TV: A Dual Power Play

Pharma brands accustomed to linear TV as a reliable medium must recognize its evolving partnership with Connected TV (CTV). While linear TV remains a dominant force for live events like sports, CTV’s rapid annual growth rate of 10% confirms its continued rise. The opportunity lies in leveraging these two mediums as complementary forces to maximize audience engagement and ROI.

• Actionable Insight: Build strategies that view linear and CTV as two sides of the same coin. Use CTV to access niche, addressable audiences while harnessing linear TV’s mass reach for real-time events.

2. Advanced Audiences Beyond Age and Gender

Pharma marketers are tasked with targeting increasingly specific consumer segments – whether it’s high earners, multicultural audiences, or caregivers. Nielsen’s advanced audience data offers a window into these nuanced groups, showcasing behaviors that extend beyond traditional demographic silos.

• Key Example: New Moms, who spend 71% of their TV time streaming, represent a valuable yet often overlooked audience for pediatric and maternal health campaigns.
• Actionable Insight: Leverage first-party and third-party data to refine audience segmentation, creating tailored messaging for advanced audience profiles.

3. The Growing Role of Retail Media

The report highlights retail media as an emerging channel, offering unprecedented opportunities for pharma marketers. With closed-loop measurement and behavior-based targeting, this medium aligns perfectly with the need for compliance-driven, measurable advertising strategies in pharma.

• Actionable Insight: Explore partnerships with retail media networks to connect with health-conscious consumers at critical touchpoints, from online pharmacies to wellness apps.

4. Navigating a Complex Ecosystem

With consumers spending an average of 10 hours daily on media, integrating TV with digital platforms is critical. For pharma brands, this means ensuring that advertising narratives are cohesive across channels – balancing compliance needs with creativity.

• Actionable Insight: Deploy integrated campaigns that unify digital, TV, and retail channels. Adopt tools that are capable of measuring performance holistically and refine your strategy iteratively.

5. Harnessing the Sports Boom

Live sports remain a goldmine for audience engagement, as evidenced by their dominance in both linear TV and emerging platforms like Netflix. With landmark events like the Olympics and the NFL delivering unparalleled viewership, these programs offer unparalleled visibility for health-related public awareness campaigns.

• Actionable Insight: Invest in premium sports programming as a platform for broad-reaching campaigns, while aligning with the wellness themes inherent to many live sporting events.

6. Staying Ahead in a Data-Driven World

As the industry transitions to programmatic, addressable marketing, pharma media professionals must adapt by embracing tools and insights that enable precision targeting. Nielsen’s report reinforces the importance of cross-media data to inform decisions, whether negotiating ad placements or measuring campaign impact.

• Actionable Insight: Partner with measurement providers, or invest in-house, that offer independent, deduplicated insights to maintain transparency and trust in your campaigns.

solli’s Final Thought

As media converges and consumer expectations evolve, the pharma industry must rise to the occasion with strategies that are data-informed, audience-specific, and contextually relevant.

With the right insights and partnerships, pharma brands can transform these challenges into unparalleled opportunities, ensuring their messaging lands where it matters most – driving health outcomes while optimizing ROI.

To read the full report click here.