Hartford HealthCare runs campaigns across 6 channels with no independent oversight on where the budget actually lands. Different service lines, different vendors, no single view of what drives patient volume versus what fills dashboards.
We scored every channel against current CT market benchmarks and built a 90-day reallocation plan. Here is what we found.
Each channel scored on a 100-point scale based on 4 factors: audience reach within your service area, cost efficiency per patient acquisition, attribution clarity, and competitive saturation in the Connecticut healthcare market.
Recommended monthly distribution for a quarterly media budget. Allocations are weighted toward channels with the highest score-to-spend efficiency in the Connecticut healthcare market.
| Channel | Monthly Spend | Percent of Budget | Change vs. Current |
|---|---|---|---|
| CTV / Streaming | $186,000 | 28 percent | +12 pts |
| TV / Broadcast (Addressable) | $146,000 | 22 percent | -8 pts |
| Programmatic Audio | $100,000 | 15 percent | +15 pts (new) |
| Out-of-Home (Digital) | $93,000 | 14 percent | No change |
| Digital Display (Retargeting Only) | $80,000 | 12 percent | -10 pts |
| Print (Community Events Only) | $20,000 | 3 percent | -9 pts |
| Measurement and Attribution Tools | $40,000 | 6 percent | +6 pts (new) |
| Total Monthly | $665,000 | 100 percent |
A phased rollout that minimizes disruption to active campaigns while progressively shifting spend toward higher-performing channels.
Baseline figures estimated from Connecticut healthcare market benchmarks and publicly available performance data. 90-day targets reflect achievable improvements from the channel mix shift described above.
| Channel | Metric | Current Baseline | 90-Day Target |
|---|---|---|---|
| CTV / Streaming | Video completion rate | 82 percent | 90 percent |
| CTV / Streaming | Cost per completed view | $0.04 | $0.03 |
| TV / Broadcast | Reach (Hartford DMA, 45+) | 68 percent | 72 percent (addressable) |
| Digital Display | Click-through rate | 0.08 percent | 0.32 percent (retargeting) |
| Programmatic Audio | Listen-through rate | N/A (new channel) | 95 percent |
| Out-of-Home | QR scan rate | N/A (no QR currently) | 0.4 percent of impressions |
| All Channels | Blended patient acquisition cost | $285 | $210 |
| All Channels | Attribution coverage | 35 percent of spend | 80 percent of spend |
Most large health systems work with media agencies that also sell inventory. That creates a structural conflict. The agency recommending your channel mix is the same entity that profits from placing buys on specific channels. Recommendations skew toward whatever generates the highest commission, not the highest patient volume.
Meridian does not sell media inventory. We do not take placement commissions. Our fee is flat, tied to the planning and optimization work, not the volume of media purchased. That means our recommendations are driven by one thing: which channels actually move patients into your system.
We have planned media for Connecticut healthcare organizations for 30 years. We know the Hartford-New Haven DMA, the local broadcast landscape, the commuter patterns, and the community media habits that national agencies miss. That local knowledge, combined with channel-agnostic planning, is what makes this approach different.
Your media budget should work for patient acquisition, not for agency commissions. Independent planning ensures every dollar is measured against outcomes, not impressions.
We are holding time next week for a 45-minute working session to walk through these numbers with your team and answer questions about implementation.
Schedule a Working Session