The trend: Healthcare and pharma marketers are ramping up point-of-care (POC) marketing spend. Revenues in the POC marketing channel surpassed $1 billion for the first time last year—a 16% YoY increase, per sales data from POC media companies collected by the Point of Care Marketing Association (PCMA), an industry trade group.

Here’s how it works: POC marketing is when information on medications, treatments, and services created by healthcare and pharma brands is delivered in settings where patients interact with doctors—like medical clinics, hospitals, pharmacies, and on telehealth visits.

Examples include:

• Waiting room digital screens showing educational videos
• Digital wallboards in doctors' offices, tablets for check-in with personalized messages
• Displays at the pharmacy counter showing information about a new medication's support programs that could include a QR code for patients to learn more about the prescription.

POC advertising also reaches healthcare providers by placing educational material on a new therapy within a doctor’s workflow, such as in an EHR (electronic health record) platform.

Why it matters: Both patients and physicians report being receptive to healthcare and pharma ads in professional settings.

• Around two-thirds of consumers say they value various POC health information sources, such as digital educational resources on a treatment provided by a clinician or take-home materials from a pharmacy, per a May 2025 M3 MI survey.
• 51% of physicians view targeted ads on professional websites as beneficial within a work-related context, per data cited in an April 2025 report from the PCMA.