One-size-fits-all paid media strategies rarely work for life science companies, where audiences are often highly niche and deal sizes range from $50 reagent orders to million-dollar CDMO contracts.
So, how can you build a paid media channel strategy that suits your life science business and delivers results?
To unpack how to build a program that works, Paul Avery sat down with three of Supreme Group’s most experienced paid media strategists: Irene Lecker, PhD, Director of Performance Marketing at Supreme Optimization; Mihaela Pupavac, PhD, EVP of Operations at Supreme Optimization; and Eric Southwell, Chief Growth Officer at Supreme Group. Between them, they have decades of experience in building effective paid media programs for life science and healthcare organizations.
If you're a marketer in pharma, biotech, medtech, or diagnostics and you've been running paid media campaigns that aren't delivering the outcomes you need, this is worth a listen.
Key takeaways from this episode:
→ Audience size and company maturity drive strategy more than price point. A $100K microscope and a $50 reagent need completely different channel mixes, but not for the reason most people think.
→ Bing is the most underused channel in life science. Half the cost per click of Google, and your ads show up in Microsoft Copilot, where locked-down university and pharma laptops are doing most of their searching.
→ Video is the highest-ROI awareness play, and AI has made it more cost-effective. One team cloned a CEO's voice from a kickoff call recording, built three awareness videos, and 10X'd their LinkedIn following in four months without him lifting a finger.
→ Lab influencers are the next big arbitrage opportunity. Grad students and post-docs with growing audiences influence every purchase in the lab, and almost no life science brand is tapping them yet.
→ Upper-funnel attribution is still unsolved, and that's okay. The danger is tunnel vision. If you optimize only for what you can track and starve awareness spend, you'll eventually damage your bottom-of-funnel results.
→ Programmatic isn't just a buzzword. Modern DSPs like StackAdapt have no minimums, offer LinkedIn-level ABM targeting, and reach across CTV, OOH, and premium web, including NPI-free physician targeting.
Chapters:
(0:00) — Intro & guest introductions
(5:00) — Matching channel strategy to company type: reagents vs. microscopes vs. CDMOs
(8:00) — "We can't run paid search — our market's too small." Is that true?
(11:00) — Are Google Ads really too expensive? The real reason CPCs go up
(13:00) — The case for Bing: Half the CPC, and your ads run in Microsoft Copilot
(18:00) — Auditing a new client: What to look at before picking a platform
(22:00) — LinkedIn vs. trade shows: The real awareness comparison
(26:00) — Solving the awareness problem: Why video is still the answer
(27:00) — Case study: 10X followers in 4 months using AI voice cloning
(31:00) — Attribution in 2026: What we can and can't measure
(33:00) — The tunnel vision problem: Why bottom-funnel ROI hides upper-funnel decay
(36:00) — How to help your internal champion defend the spend
(41:00) — Thought leadership as a channel: The Supreme Pod origin story
(42:00) — Why thought leadership works — and why finding the face is the hard part
(46:00) — Programmatic demystified: What it is and when to use it
(50:00) — Is programmatic right for every life science company?
(56:00) — Trends prediction: Where paid media in life science is headed
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Supreme Optimization is a life science and healthcare digital marketing agency.
Links
Supreme Group: https://supremegroup.ai
Supreme Intelligence: Supreme Intelligence | AI-Powered Services for Healthcare & Life Sciences
Supreme Group LinkedIn: Supreme Group
