For anyone using digital advertising to promote clinical trial participation – especially on social media – there’s an interesting thing happens in the last 2 to 3 months of each year, based on the fact there are more advertisers entering the market to promote items they wish to sell for Christmas.

Now, you might think that a patient recruitment advert wouldn’t be competing with ads that are trying to sell Barbies or video games.

But actually, it’s the same finite number of people in the target audience, only now with more advertisers. Which can lead to an increase in Cost Per Click and potentially a decrease in performance if your ads get lost among these additional competitors.

For example, if your ads are targeting people aged 30-40, this will be the same basic demographic for people trying to sell toys to parents.

So it may well be that an increase in your overall budget is required to achieve the same results.