April 24, 2026
At AdLab, a panel of media and agency leaders gathered to unpack how pharma brands can navigate the rapidly evolving world of streaming, live sports, and connected TV. The discussion featured Cliff Covey of CMI Media Group, Kristy Quagliariello of Klick Health, Sheyda Karvar of Fingerpaint Media, Adam Thomas of KINESSO, and moderator Paul Sluberski of DeepIntent. Event host Lisa Kopp Johnson set the stakes from the start: when you combine the scale and cultural relevancy of live sports with the precision of streaming and health-driven data, she argued, “these environments become…real strategic, measurable channels that can drive outcomes.”
A Fragmented Viewing Landscape
The conversation opened on familiar ground: the dramatic shift in how audiences consume content. Linear TV’s grip has loosened, splintered across devices, platforms, and time zones. “We have this really fragmented environment now,” said Klick’s Kristy Quagliariello, “where even though the experience is somewhat the same — you’re still watching the same content — the experience is no longer linear, no pun intended.” She backed that up with a striking data point from a conversation with NBCU: for the Olympics, 30 to 40 percent of content was consumed on mobile devices. “It’s not always CTV on the big screen,” she said. “It’s really going to the mobile or the iPad.”
Adam Thomas of KINESSO acknowledged the complexity head-on. “It is still a very confusing marketplace, to be fair,” he said. “Who owns what inventory at what times? Is it Sling? Is it Roku? Is it the app you’re on? It’s all over the place. But…that fragmentation has helped for sure.”
Fragmentation as Opportunity
Complexity, the panelists agreed, cuts both ways. The same fragmentation that makes planning harder also opens a far more flexible, targetable buying environment than linear TV ever allowed. “The fragmentation does create opportunity in a lot of ways,” said Thomas, “especially in an addressable marketplace. Now that everything really has gone into the apps, you can buy it all addressably.”
Karvar noted that this shift means brands no longer need massive upfront commitments to be in the right place at the right time. “You don’t need to have those big buys in the moment, in the live environment,” she said. “You can be aligned with that really high-impact content, but do it in a more data-driven way.” Sluberski put the broader shift in plain terms: “Primetime is now all the time. In digital, we have the ability now to create the primetime experience using the data-driven approach to reaching and influencing those customers.”
Smarter Upfronts and the Premium Content Case
The group also explored how pharma brands can inject addressable targeting into their upfront buys. Thomas described using propensity modeling to challenge clients who assume live sports aren’t the right environment for their audience. Having that data to say “actually, yeah, they’re here”—and then bringing that upfront buy into a platform to layer in third-party audiences—has proved its value, he said. “It comes at a cost … but that eCPM, the effectiveness of your targeting is going to pay out dividends, and we’ve seen it happen.”
Karvar made the case for premium inventory on its own terms. In live, high-attention environments, she argued, the question isn’t scale: “It’s about aligning yourselves with premium content where people are locked in and highly engaged and paying attention, where they can get a lot out of those 60 seconds that you have with them.”
Brands of All Sizes Can Play
A recurring theme was the democratization of what was once a big-brand-only arena. “Now we have very small brands with very small target lists that are activating March Madness PMPs in an addressable way,” said Covey. “It’s really exciting how the streaming space has just opened up opportunity for brands that haven’t necessarily had the opportunity in the past.”
Karvar added that the reach extends well beyond the live broadcast itself: “There are a lot of opportunities to be sports-adjacent or live event–adjacent on additional channels, whether that’s social, online video, or even just any sort of programmatic buy around the content that surrounds it.”
Privacy and the Evolving Publisher Landscape
The conversation took an important turn around data privacy. “I think it is critical that everybody gets privacy right,” Covey said, “because it’s going to be so hard to earn back trust if we ruin that.”
On the publisher side, Quagliariello saw meaningful progress in the industry’s willingness to meet pharma’s unique compliance needs. “The publishers realize how big a vertical pharmaceuticals and healthcare is,” she said. “They’ve really had to speed up the process of onboarding pharma advertisers and being a lot more nimble and flexible.”
The Bottom Line: Start Testing
The panel’s message to pharma marketers was clear: the tools, the inventory, and the audience data are in place, and the barrier to entry has never been lower. “Don’t be afraid to test and start small,” said Quagliariello. “You don’t have to start with the Super Bowl. You can start with March Madness. You can start with MLB.” Build a framework, learn what works, and scale from there.
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