Pharma marketers need a share

Brand planning for 2027 is in full swing for pharma marketers. As AI draws more clinician engagement, it also creates a new budgeting consideration: building share of answer (SOA). SOA challenges the traditional performance measurement model, which typically aims for share of voice and omnichannel reach. But when 81% of U.S. physicians now report using AI tools in clinical practice, marketers must think beyond being seen to also being cited. In an interview with Stephen Onikoro, chief operating officer of PharmaForceIQ, he shared that pharma marketers can’t pour budget into AI ad pitches based on impressions alone and expect to engage effectively. Instead, they’ll need to base decisions on data: knowing where healthcare providers (HCPs) show up and what drives their interactions. HCPs are changing where they seek answers Clinicians are consumers who use large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT or Claude in their daily lives. It’s not surprising they rely on LLMs for clinical questions, too. The data backs this up. NBC News reported that, in April 2026 alone, 65% of U.S. physicians used OpenEvidence across nearly 27 million clinical encounters. Additionally, a global survey of healthcare professionals found that 54% use generative AI to access scientific information, and 38% rated it as critical or very important to their work, placing AI above sales reps as a clinical information source. In response, pharma marketers are starting to shift their strategy, so far focusing most changes around answer engine optimization. “The questions have been, what adjustments do we need to make to embed ourselves into the organic flow of these AI engines? How do we adapt our websites to be more amenable to AI crawlers? And they’ve made great strides there,” Onikoro said. “But from a paid-media perspective, 2027 will be huge. Most pharma marketing teams will allocate a sizable portion of their budgets to some type of AI campaign.” AI platforms know this and are touting substantial impressions-based inventory. But that inventory comes at a high cost — and potentially high risk when investment decisions lack the context of audience data. The problem? Many pharma marketers lack audience data specific to AI platforms, particularly the continuously updated insights needed to adapt as HCP behavior and LLM interactions change. “While every platform can likely pitch impressive reach, that reach only matters if your customers are there,” Onikoro noted. “If you’re overinvesting in one versus the other, and your physicians are not there, then you’ll get very poor ROI. That makes the data behind those decisions critical.” Use data to guide AI spend Before allocating budget, marketers need reliable data to understand HCP activity and where they’ll get the best returns on investment. Affinity data can provide that first layer. Marketers have long used it to inform ad spend, but now it can extend to AI platforms. In PharmaForceIQ’s case, its platform dynamically and continuously maps affinity data to HCP behavior across channels, now including both consumer LLMs and clinical-specific AI platforms. Some clinical platforms also require HCPs to register using their national provider identifier, providing an additional signal of which HCPs are using which tools. The next level is understanding not just where HCPs seek information but also what they seek and why. “There’s a much deeper level of insight that we are building toward through agent plug-ins,” Onikoro explained. “Through these, you can provide an authoritative source of information that the model is able to reference and use as context when responding to a query.” The exchange can also provide signals in the other direction. Topics, keywords and context can reveal what HCPs are seeking and engaging with, helping marketers refine both where they invest and the information they make available. Share of answer creates a new way to engage Ask any pharma marketer about SOA, and they’ll likely respond with some trepidation. They’re making important decisions today based on a constantly changing landscape. But the right data can make those decisions clearer and open new possibilities down the road. “For years, marketers have figured out ways to build share of voice across many different channels. Now, AI creates an opportunity to potentially interact one-on-one with an HCP, informing the answers to their specific questions in the same way you would expect a brand marketer or sales rep to respond,” Onikoro said. “This will be an evolution, of course, but the next phase is very exciting, potentially giving marketers a new way to connect and communicate with their customers.” Read more about how PharmaForceIQ helps marketers stay on top of SOA with a dynamic, continuously updated view of audience behavior that delivers more efficient campaigns.