Pharma · Vaccines
Media ran outside the eligible population windows.
This marketing & margin audit identified $58k in wasted annual spend in a Pharma business, evidenced, senior reviewed, and delivered in 6 days.
The business
A vaccines and public health brand ran media campaigns to drive uptake, flighted and targeted on a broad calendar. Eligibility for the vaccine was defined by specific populations and windows, but media planning largely followed general seasonal patterns, so how much spend landed outside the genuinely eligible audience and timing was never closely examined.
What triggered the audit
Media efficiency was weaker than the budget and reach implied, hinting a chunk of spend was reaching people who couldn’t act on it. The audit compared media delivery against the eligible population and the windows in which they could actually be vaccinated, testing how much spend fell outside them.
What the audit found
A significant portion of the media was running outside the eligible population windows entirely. Because flighting followed broad seasonal habit rather than the specific timing and demographics of eligibility, spend was reaching audiences who either weren’t eligible for the vaccine or were being reached well outside the window in which they could act. Impressions that could not, by definition, convert to uptake. The campaign looked active and well delivered on standard reach metrics, so the misalignment between media timing and real eligibility stayed invisible. Concentrating spend on the eligible population within the windows that matter recovered the waste, which across the campaign amounted to roughly $58k a year of out of window media.
What we changed
Realigned media flighting and targeting to the eligible population and the specific windows in which they can actually be vaccinated.
Cut the spend that fell outside eligibility by demographic or timing, where it could never convert into genuine uptake.
Concentrated budget into the in window periods and eligible audiences that genuinely drive vaccination rather than broad seasonal reach.
Made in window, in population delivery a monitored metric, so future flighting tracks real patient eligibility rather than the seasonal calendar habit it had always followed.
The result
The published chart shows media spend outside eligible patient windows falling from 24% to 2%, a 22 percentage point decrease. Eligibility describes whether the audience could act within the relevant window; it is not a claim that every other reached person was generally unreachable. $58k a year recovered by spending media only where and when the eligible population can act, an annual figure equal to 10× the $5,950 Audit + Sprint fee. For any health or eligibility gated brand, broad flighting is the leak: reach looks healthy while spend lands on people who can’t convert. If your media follows a seasonal calendar rather than real eligibility windows, much of it may be unreachable by definition. A fixed fee audit realigns delivery to eligibility in days, so every dollar reaches an audience that can actually respond.
From kickoff to signed off findings: 6 days, inside our fixed 5–7 day window.
What the client said
$58k a year of wasted spend cut in 6 days
Media spend outside eligible patient windows: 24% → 2%
“Reach looked healthy, but a quarter of our media reached people who could not act on it. Leslie compared delivery against the eligible population and its windows: 24% of spend fell outside them. Flighting now follows eligibility.”
Leslie MartinSenior Auditor · signed this audit off