Thanks for the comment and the heads up on the Flash changes coming in the future. Big changes for sure. I’m not sold on Skyscape or any other display ads being very effective. I would guess that these have interaction rates in the same neighborhood as flat banner ads. Maybe not. If they have higher rates than that now, I’m thinking this will decrease when a little of the novelty wears off. I remember when my previous company rolled out Tablet PCs with “interactive” presentations for sales calls. The first few months showed that docs spent almost 5-10 times more minutes with reps. I speculated then that this was because of the novelty. Turned out I was right, as the time per call gradually drifted back to historic averages over the next few months. There’s a lot more the industry needs to do to engage HCPs. I’d like to take a look OUTSIDE the industry for some ideas for once.

I think that Pharma needs to get on the Mobile Marketing boat in general, but not just for the iPhone.

Also, flash is rumored today to be coming in October (bit.ly/2dnuFY) my guess is with the annual announcement of the iPod line up in the fall. HTML5 will make all Flash obsolete in the coming years.

Pharma needs to start slow with advertising to HCPs on skyscape or other in app ads so they can display ISI etc.

TG

There are a few areas where flash falls short. Mobile media, as you pointed out is one. Visibility to search engine crawlers is another (although that is changing with undisclosed capabilities from Google and Yahoo!). Yet another is that screen-reader software for the disabled is unable to process flash content. Any information served in flash will not be read or parsed by this software. This can be a very important part of the formula for many drugs; diabetes and geriatric medication to name a few.

Elegant solutions include transcribing information from any video content as a “flash alternative” presented in the event that the user does not have the flash plug-in and an aesthetically pleasing, branded design with call-to-action content that creates a complete experience for users, regardless of what device they are consuming their media with.

Good point, but website builders (within and beyond pharma) would do well to look beyond just the iPhone’s inability to render Flash.

The iPhone offers so many features (geolocation, SMS, email, photos, video, wi-fi, web browsers, etc.), it would do pharma marketers a lot of good to consider how to better reach and connect to customers, caregivers, patients via mobile applications.

I’m currently discussing the potential use of mobile web applications to encourage and track compliance.

Cheers,
Scott

Scott’s last blog post..adjustafresh: νιώθω σαν να πρόκειται για το πώς μερικοί άνθρωποι ακούς όταν μιλάω