The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has recently released new guidance with important implications for paid social advertising in the health and wellness sector.
The focus is on how personal and sensitive health information may be collected, used and shared when people visit health websites, research healthcare services or engage with online health content.
This changes how managers of health and wellness brands should approach paid social campaigns.
Tracking and retargeting paid social ads have long been common practice in digital advertising. For an eCommerce brand, this might mean reminding someone about a product they viewed or left in their cart.
Health advertising is different.
Someone visiting a page about fertility, mental health, treatment options or a specific condition may be researching something highly personal. Using that activity to retarget them with ads can feel intrusive and may raise privacy concerns.
The OAIC reviewed a range of Australian health websites and found that third-party advertising tools were widely used.
It also found that website activity could be shared with advertising platforms, including the pages people visited, searches they made and actions they took.
On a health website, this activity may reveal more than general browsing behaviour. It can point to a person’s health interests, concerns or treatment needs.
The findings reinforce that health-related paid social advertising requires a higher level of care than advertising in many other industries.
Health organisations can still advertise on platforms such as Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn, but some common audience and retargeting practices may no longer be appropriate.
Paid social advertisers should not assume they can:
● retarget people based on visits to sensitive treatment or condition pages
● build audiences from health-related searches, clicks or form activity
● use website behaviour to infer a person’s health interests
● send sensitive health information to social platforms.
The biggest impact is likely to be on retargeting and campaign optimisation, with less website behaviour available to build audiences or guide delivery.
Health brands will need to rely more on:
● strong, relevant creative
● broader audience targeting
● educational content
● platform-based lead forms
● clear landing pages
● trusted brand messaging
● consented first-party data.
Rather than depending heavily on previous website activity, paid social ads will need to clearly explain who the service is for, why it matters and what action to take.
The OAIC’s guidance does not mean health brands need to stop paid social advertising.
It means the highly personalised retargeting methods used in other industries may not be suitable for health and wellness.
The focus should shift towards strong strategy, creative and messaging that reaches the right audience without relying on sensitive browsing behaviour.
For health brands, this is an opportunity to build campaigns that are effective without feeling invasive.
Wellmark is a specialist health and wellness marketing agency, with experts across paid social, strategy, creative and healthcare communications. We help health brands navigate the changing paid social landscape and build campaigns that are effective, responsible and suited to the sensitivities of the sector. Need help reviewing your paid social approach? Get in touch with the Wellmark team.
Tracey Hazelwood,
Social Media Manager at Wellmark.
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