The marketing jargon du jour is “Walled Gardens.” Given that Facebook, Google, and Amazon are commonly labelled as Walled Gardens and account for 55% of digital ad spend it would be foolish to ignore the concept. But what exactly is a Walled Garden? And should a pharma marketer value one?
To begin answering these questions let’s turn to the world of exercise bikes.
At the beginning of the pandemic my sister, like many, bought a Peloton. It’s a sleek looking device and, although it now has a tendency to act as a clothes rack, it more or less serves its purpose. Around the same time, a colleague of mine went out and purchased a generic Bluetooth-enabled workout bike.
My sister can only use Peloton software and classes with her bike, my colleague—with his trusty iPad attached to the bike—can select from a variety of service providers. The real kicker is that while my sister pays $39 per month for her Peloton membership my colleague only has to hand over $13. The pricing disparity comes from the fact that if you own a Peloton bike you must have a Peloton membership to enjoy the classes and justify owning the bike in the first place. All this leads to the conclusion that the Peloton bike is a classic example of a Walled Garden.
What is a Walled Garden?
Whether walled or open, media is media. While every publisher from the New York Times to TikTok mouths the same talking points about performance and uses off-platform tactics such as email, app notifications, and advertising to engage audiences, you would not mistake USA Today for Reddit. So where’s the difference?
While every media offering owns their platform and engages their audience, Walled Gardens differentiate themselves by:
- Validating performance data.
- Controlling performance data.
- Learning more about your customers than you do.
As you can tell, the difference is in the data. A Walled Garden offers up an audience, and in exchange receives your money, and holds onto the data.
Should Your Media Be Walled?
From the user’s perspective, Walled Gardens are all about curation. What is Facebook other than a way to have all your friends in one place? Same with Google. Everyone’s favorite search engine does little more than bring together web pages.
For marketers, the value of Walled Gardens comes from their ability to aggregate engageable users. Because plenty of your targets are within their confines these platforms get to charge you for the privilege of inserting your assets. It’s not that Walled Gardens are the cool kids—it’s that they can offer a seat at the cool kids’ table.
The question is: Do you want to sit at the table? Sure, you get to put your assets in front of your target audience. But, at the same time you are forfeiting the data around how those assets perform and how your targets interact with them. You are putting yourself at the mercy of the platform.
However, these platforms present value propositions. If you are a media buyer looking to get 1,000 aggregate-level, on-platform engagements over two weeks from a hyper-niche sub-specialty and a Walled Garden is offering to do just that thanks to the size of their audience, then don’t think twice. If the name of the game is volume, Walled Gardens can be effective tools.
What Does This Mean for Pharma Marketers?
It would seem that a veritable gold rush is occurring among Walled Garden providers. Facebook, Google, and Amazon have struck motherlodes causing more and more vendors to dive into the space in hope of finding a nugget. In practice, this takes the form of every Tom, Dick, and Harry reconceptualizing their pitch decks to position any and all types of platforms as actually Walled Gardens.
Pharma marketers need to be weary of such sleight of hand. More importantly though, pharma marketers need to realize that Walled Gardens fail to provide on many key performance indicators (KPIs). Especially when it comes to data.
If you trawl through the privacy statements of most leading pharma marketing Walled Gardens you will not find a mention of national provider identifier (NPI) level data tracking. The reason for this is that Walled Gardens are all about size as opposed to detail. The result is that you and your brands lose insight into who exactly is engaging with your content not to mention their personal habits in regards to behavioral patterns.
So the next time a vendor comes into your boardroom—or Teams call—claiming that their platform is a one-stop shop for all things engagement, push them on what exactly they’re willing and able to do for you and your clients.
How Much Should You Invest in a Walled Garden?
The value of using a Walled Garden ultimately comes down to a simple formula:
Value = Engagements – Price – Data Forfeited
If the value derived from Walled Gardens represents a greater value for you and your clients than other platform categories then feel free to go all in. However, if greater value is found outside the confines of the garden, then there’s no need to step inside the walls.
For most marketers though, several KPIs are driving ad spend decisions. These revolve around engagement quantity and specificity. While one set of non-walled platforms may give you more value according to the equation above, they may not have the reach of a Walled Garden. Therefore, in order to hit your engagement totals you need to spread the spend. Alternatively, your client might only want NPI-level data on a representative sample freeing up the rest of their funds for Walled Gardens.
In the end, Walled Gardens are neither the bee’s knees nor a waste of time. Instead, they are one option among many in the pharma marketing landscape. When you look past the sales pitches and industry jargon, the only factor that matters is whether or not they can deliver the results your client is expecting. If these platforms fail to live up to the hype, then do not hesitate to say, “Mr. Marketer, tear down this wall.”
