Reaching Millions of At-Risk People Through Paid Media

A client in the healthcare & pharma sector approached us to support a nationwide awareness campaign focused on helping people understand their eligibility for a free seasonal vaccine.

The campaign aimed to raise awareness of common seasonal infections and encourage at-risk groups to take preventative action through a dedicated campaign website featuring an eligibility quiz and information on how to access vaccination services locally.

Having previously relied primarily on social media activity, the client wanted to broaden their digital approach and create a more integrated campaign capable of reaching vulnerable audiences at scale while driving meaningful website engagement.

The key objectives: 

• Increase awareness among at-risk audiences

• Drive website traffic and engagement

• Encourage completion of an online eligibility quiz

• Drive clicks to find local healthcare providers offering vaccinations

The campaign also needed to operate within strict healthcare advertising guidelines, with limitations around audience targeting, creative approvals and platform functionality.  

To maximise reach and engagement, we developed a fully integrated paid media strategy spanning Meta, Programmatic and Google Ads. Each channel played a distinct role within the campaign.

Meta was used to build awareness and engagement among key audience groups, while Programmatic activity expanded reach beyond traditional social and search channels across trusted digital environments using contextual and behavioural targeting signals. Google Ads captured demand from users actively searching for information relating to seasonal infections, vaccination eligibility and preventative healthcare.

The campaign ran throughout the peak vaccination awareness period from October 2025 through to February 2026, ensuring activity aligned with seasonal demand and audience interest.

Target audiences included:

• Adults aged 65+

• Individuals living with long-term health conditions

• Carers

• Communities with historically lower vaccination uptake

Overcoming Audience Targeting Limitations

Healthcare campaigns present unique challenges when it comes to audience targeting.

Platforms such as Meta restrict advertisers from targeting users based on health conditions or sensitive personal information, meaning traditional audience segmentation techniques are often unavailable.

To overcome these limitations, our strategy relied on a combination of:

• Geographic targeting

• Age-based audience segmentation

• Behavioural engagement signals

• Contextual targeting

• Creative-led optimisation

This approach allowed us to remain compliant while still reaching the audiences most relevant to the campaign.

Using Creative as a Performance Driver

With targeting options limited, creative became one of the most important performance levers within the campaign.

Messaging, imagery and video content were carefully developed to resonate with target audiences and help Meta's Creative AI (Andromeda and GEM) systems identify users most likely to engage with the content. As the campaign progressed, spend was continuously weighted towards the highest-performing placements across Facebook and Instagram, including Feed, Reels and Stories.

Campaign objectives also evolved throughout the campaign lifecycle. Initial activity focused on traffic objectives to generate awareness and engagement signals, before transitioning to conversion-focused optimisation once sufficient audience data had been gathered. This allowed platform algorithms to prioritise higher-intent users and improve overall campaign efficiency.

Expanding Reach Through Programmatic Advertising

Programmatic activity played a key role in scaling the campaign's reach and ensuring awareness messaging was delivered to the right audiences across the UK.

Through StackAdapt, we built audience segments using:

• Browsing behaviour signals – targeting users actively consuming content related to seasonal infections, preventative healthcare and vaccination awareness.

• Contextual content signals – serving ads alongside relevant articles and editorial content where audiences were already engaging with healthcare-related topics.

• Geographic targeting – focusing activity on regions with historically lower vaccination uptake to help maximise awareness where it could have the greatest impact.

• Curated third-party audience signals – leveraging specialist audience segments associated with long-term health conditions and preventative healthcare interests.

To further support campaign objectives, dedicated campaigns were developed for communities with historically lower vaccination uptake. By combining audience intelligence with geographic targeting, we were able to increase visibility among groups where awareness and engagement could have the greatest public health impact.

Combining Reach and Engagement

The programmatic campaign ran across two key formats, each designed to play a different role within the wider media strategy.

Display Advertising

Display advertising provided large-scale reach through banner placements across thousands of trusted, brand-safe websites. This format allowed us to build awareness efficiently and maintain a consistent presence across a wide range of online environments.

Native Video

Native video placements integrated seamlessly within editorial environments, appearing naturally alongside articles, blog content and publisher websites. Because these placements feel less disruptive within the browsing experience, they often drive stronger engagement and higher video completion rates than traditional display formats.

Through combining both display and native video activity, the campaign was able to balance broad audience reach with deeper engagement, helping reinforce campaign messaging throughout the user journey.

Connecting Channels Through Data

A key feature of the strategy was the integration between Programmatic and Meta activity, allowing the channels to work together rather than operate in isolation.

Using impression tracking, users exposed to Programmatic ads were added into audience pools within Meta, allowing us to re-engage them across social channels. This helped create a connected user journey, moving audiences from initial awareness through to deeper engagement with the campaign messaging.

Rather than relying solely on Meta's native targeting capabilities, this approach allowed us to build highly relevant audience segments based on real exposure to campaign activity across the wider digital ecosystem. As a result, we were able to serve follow-up messaging to users who had already demonstrated some level of awareness, helping improve campaign efficiency and audience relevance.

This cross-channel approach helped:

• Reinforce campaign messaging across multiple touchpoints

• Increase brand and message familiarity over time

• Build more qualified audience pools for social activity

• Improve engagement rates throughout the campaign lifecycle

• Support a more efficient use of media budget by focusing engagement activity on users already exposed to campaign messaging

By connecting Programmatic and Meta in this way, we created a more cohesive digital experience that strengthened audience engagement and helped maximise the impact of the overall campaign.

Why it mattered

Instead of treating channels independently, audience signals from Programmatic were used to strengthen Meta targeting and engagement activity, creating a more connected and efficient user journey. 

The campaign delivered strong results across all channels, successfully combining broad-scale awareness with meaningful audience engagement.

Through combining the strengths of paid social, programmatic advertising and paid search, the campaign created multiple opportunities for audiences to engage with the messaging throughout their digital journey. The result was a highly effective awareness campaign that not only exceeded performance benchmarks across several channels but also delivered substantial improvements compared to previous campaign activity.

Overall Campaign Performance

The campaign successfully delivered large-scale awareness while driving meaningful engagement across all channels.

• 9.9 million+ impressions

• 95,000+ clicks

• 800,000+ video views

• 5,300+ website engagement actions 

Meta Results

Meta played a key role in driving awareness, engagement and website traffic throughout the campaign. Compared to the previous year's activity, Meta generated substantial improvements in click-through rates, landing page engagement and overall campaign efficiency.

Compared with the previous year's campaign activity:

• 123% increase in click-through rate

• 29% reduction in CPM

• 727% increase in landing page views

Campaign performance included:

• 2.4 million impressions

• 81,000 clicks

• 124,000 video views

• Nearly 60,000 landing page visits

Programmatic Results

Programmatic activity was instrumental in delivering reach at scale, ensuring campaign messaging appeared across trusted digital environments and relevant content categories. Through a combination of display and native video formats, the campaign achieved strong engagement rates while successfully reaching audiences beyond social platforms.

Programmatic activity delivered:

• 7.4 million impressions

• 6,600 clicks

• 677,000 video views

Video completion rates reached up to 72%, outperforming industry benchmarks.

Google Ads Results

Although Google Ads launched later than originally planned, the channel delivered highly efficient performance and captured users actively searching for information related to seasonal infections and vaccination eligibility.

• 104,000+ impressions

• 7,500 clicks

• 7.17% CTR

• 6.39% conversion rate

• £0.91 CPC

The channel generated:

• 568 quiz starts

• 480 healthcare provider search actions

This campaign demonstrates the power of combining paid social, programmatic advertising and search within a single integrated strategy. By overcoming audience targeting limitations, leveraging creative as a performance driver and connecting channels through data, STM REACH delivered significant awareness and engagement at scale.

The result was a highly effective campaign that reached millions of people across the UK, encouraged meaningful action among at-risk audiences and significantly improved performance compared with previous activity.