--- title: "Media ran outside the eligible population windows" description: "Campaign flighting and targeting spent heavily outside when and where eligible patients converted. Marketing & margin audit: $58k/yr in wasted spend cut." url: https://marginfix.ai/cases/media-ran-outside-the-eligible-population-windows/ lastmod: 2026-10-24 --- Media ran outside the eligible population windows. [Request an audit →](/book/) 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. $1–3M annual revenue Vaccines Focus: Eligibility targeting −$58k wasted spend cut / yr 24% out of window spend (before) 6 days to findings Media spend outside eligible patient windows Before audit 24% → After fix 2% ## 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. ◉ How we produced this finding The eligibility targeting finding here rests on causation, not correlation. MarginFix ran the pharma account’s spend through its agentic AI audit framework, then confirmed the incremental effect with a controlled test, and a named senior auditor signed the result off before it left the building. Data sources: Spend by channel, campaign, creative and audience, joined to conversion and revenue data, plus a geo holdout test built to isolate what eligibility targeting genuinely caused rather than what it merely claimed. Key frameworks: Geo holdout incrementality testing, Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) and attribution correction and inflation factor analysis, cross checked against Analytic Partners ROI Genome, Google Meridian and Meta Robyn. Human validation gate: Every incrementality read is rerun against your own data and signed off by a named senior auditor before it ships. No automated output ever leaves the building unreviewed. Verified against CRM / rep call logs Sample distribution records Territory spend ledger Finance P&L The wasted spend cut / yr was measured like for like over a matched period, reconciled to territory spend in the finance ledger, and signed off by a named senior auditor before publication. Client identity redacted to protect their commercial position. WORKING PAPER ████████ Vaccines Representative Redacted Media window Spend off window Peak eligibility 2% Shoulder period 9% Off window flighting 24% wasted spend cut / yr +$58,420 Recurring, recovered every year the fix holds, not a one off. Working paper: media spend outside eligible patient windows traced line by line and reconciled to territory spend in the finance ledger over a matched period. Line items representative and redacted; the recovered figure is the reconciled audit finding. ## 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. ![Portrait photograph of Leslie Martin](/assets/team/leslie-martin.jpg) Reviewed & signed off by: Leslie Martin Senior Auditor · MarginFix · 10+ years of auditing experience ✓ Anonymized to protect the client · senior reviewed findings · Audit completed between 2024 and 2026, contracted through Cristian Bragau's practice before the MarginFix name existed · Published in the MarginFix library July 21, 2026 · Last reviewed October 24, 2026 ## What the client said PHARMA Approved Jul 2025 $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.” **Brand Director · Pharma · Vaccines** Written approval Under NDA 6 days to findings ![Portrait photograph of Leslie Martin](/assets/team/leslie-martin.jpg) **Leslie Martin** Senior Auditor · signed this audit off [Request an audit →](/book/) [Prefer to talk it through first? Talk to an auditor →](/book/call/) ## More Pharma findings [Retail vet channel discounts were set below margin, +$49k/yr](/cases/retail-vet-channel-discounts-were-set-below-margin/) [Patient acquisition spend ran above what reimbursement paid, −$71k/yr](/cases/patient-acquisition-spend-ran-above-what-reimbursement-paid/) [Congress and KOL sponsorship showed no measurable return, $88k/yr](/cases/congress-and-kol-sponsorship-showed-no-measurable-return/) [Seasonal media weight ignored when the category actually converted, +$60k/yr](/cases/seasonal-media-weight-ignored-when-the-category-actually-con/) [Unbranded search was paying for traffic the brand site already won, −$78k/yr](/cases/unbranded-search-was-paying-for-traffic-the-brand-site-alrea/) [HCP and patient budgets were optimized in isolation, −$64k/yr](/cases/hcp-and-patient-budgets-were-optimised-in-isolation/) [The benchmark: what audits recover across 74 cases →](/benchmark/) [All case studies](/case-studies/) [Model a Pharma budget in the wasted ad spend calculator →](/estimator/pharma/)