While Pharma Spends Dollars in Saturated Channels, HCPs Spend Time in Games

While Pharma Spends Dollars in Saturated Channels, HCPs Spend Time in Games

Ask a physician, “Are you a gamer?”
Some may say yes. Most will probably say no.

So ask a different question:

“Do you play Candy Crush? Wordle? Solitaire? Wordscapes?”

“…well, of course. Who doesn’t?”

It’s 2026. Asking someone if they’re a gamer is like asking if they’re a “TV watcher.” The answer’s a crapshoot. They may say, “No - I watch Netflix”. Or YouTube. Or the NBA.

There are more than 3 billion gamers globally. The vast majority of them don’t play Call of Duty. They play puzzle games. Strategy games. A few levels before bed.

Healthcare professionals are no different. They’re humans too, remember?

And yet, as an industry, we continue to treat games as fringe media.

The Most Undervalued Channel in Digital

Games account for more than 13% of global digital media time, yet receive only 2.8% of digital ad spend.

That is roughly a 4 to 5x gap between attention and investment overall. For every dollar chasing HCP attention elsewhere, zero is competing inside games.

Meanwhile, broadcast, email, banners, paid search, conferences, and social feeds are increasingly saturated. Competition is fierce. CPMs climb. Attention fragments.

Games, by contrast, represent one of the largest undiscovered goldmines in digital media. It is a massive reservoir of attention that remains largely untapped by healthcare marketers.

Why?

For one - it’s because they don’t come asking for your ad dollars. The global games industry generates over $200 billion per year in revenue, making it larger than the film and music industries combined. Almost all of that revenue comes directly from players themselves - through in-app purchases and premium content.

In other words, games don’t need the advertising that other media does. They are already delivering so much value and entertainment that users happily click, pay, and play on.

Another reason: much of the advertising that does exist inside games is circular. Games advertising other games. A self-contained ecosystem.

Which leaves an enormous, under-realized opportunity for other industries.

Including healthcare.

We Know HCPs Are Playing

We don’t rely on anecdotes.

We check and double-check.

When surveyed properly, physicians openly acknowledge the games they play. The trick is not to ask, “Are you a gamer?” but to ask about specific titles and genres.

And beyond self-reporting, we can see it in the data.

Through ELE, Relevate Health’s data platform that tracks HCP digital behavior, we observe meaningful engagement with gaming environments across specialties and geographies. These aren’t edge cases. They’re patterns.

We’re not talking about a niche audience.

We’re talking about a channel that captures meaningful time and attention from the same healthcare professionals that brands are competing aggressively to reach elsewhere.

How Doctors Play

Physicians are busy. That shapes behavior.

While some carve out time for deep console or PC sessions, most HCP gameplay is opportunistic:

• Ten minutes between patients
• Twenty minutes at the airport
• A round before bed

Mobile and web dominate this pattern, but not entirely. Over a million HCPs globally are active PC/console players. Many more are engaged in hybrid patterns across platforms.

Just like media consumption, gameplay is fragmented and contextual. (this sentence reads oddly)

Specialty Matters

Game preferences aren’t random.

In our decade-plus experience building HCP games across every major specialty, peculiar patterns emerge. Examples:

• Dermatologists often prefer rapid-fire, time-pressured gameplay with short decision loops.
• Cardiologists gravitate toward strategy mechanics with longer arcs and layered choices.
• Oncologists frequently report enjoying tile-matching, logic puzzles, and hidden object formats.

Are there exceptions? Of course. These are trends, not stereotypes.

But the broader point stands: HCPs are not a monolith. Nuance matters.

Attention Inside Games Is Different

Not all impressions are equal.

Games are interactive. They demand cognitive participation. They trigger anticipation, reward cycles, competition, and mastery.

Players are not passively scrolling.

They are focused.

Meanwhile, television broadcast remains one of the most wasteful and least trackable channels in modern media. You pay for reach. You hope for attention. Measurement lags behind reality.

Inside digital games, by contrast, engagement is measurable. Attention is intentional. Time spent is meaningful.

And yet, this whole channel is completely outside of healthcare marketing’s radar.

The Bigger Context

Globally:

• There are more gamers than social media users in many markets.
• The average gamer in the U.S. is now in their early-to-mid 30s (32 to 35), with nearly one-third over age 45 and meaningful participation well into 50+ demographics.
• Mobile gaming penetration among U.S. adults is closer to 70% or higher, making it one of the most broadly adopted digital behaviors.
• Engagement time rivals traditional video streaming and social media consumption. In some segments it exceeds both.

Despite this, healthcare media mix models completely ignore games.

We continue to fight over increasingly crowded spaces while under-investing in one of the few major digital environments that remains underpriced relative to attention.

The Reality

HCPs are playing games.

They are playing while commuting. While waiting. While decompressing.

They are playing puzzle games. Strategy games. Word games. Casual games. Console games.

Why? Because they’re human. And humans play.

The question is no longer whether healthcare professionals engage in gaming environments.

The question is whether healthcare marketing will continue to overlook one of the largest, most immersive digital attention pools available.

Because while every other channel becomes more saturated and more competitive, games remain disproportionately undervalued relative to the time they command.

And that imbalance rarely lasts forever.