What Top Health Audience Campaigns
Get Right in Q1

Feb 02, 2026 | Jessica Daigle

One pattern remains consistent: the brands that outperform the market are the ones that build strong media campaigns early in the year.

The first quarter isn’t just about getting campaigns live. It’s a critical window to replace guesswork with proof, optimize aggressively, and implement successful strategies.

Use this checklist to set your campaign up for success and ensure that every dollar invested this year is backed by evidence-based decisions.

1. Confirm that your campaigns are set up correctly.

The most common issues in Q1 are often administrative. Start with the fundamentals:

• Audit your live audience segments: Confirm the correct audience segments are in-market, applied consistently, and are reaching the right people.
• Define a clear framework for success: Establish clear measures of success and consider how they may evolve over time. Align all stakeholders early to create a shared roadmap that makes it easier to scale the tactics that truly move the business forward.
• Target what you measure, and measure what you target: Align segment definitions to your KPIs so performance can be measured and optimized accurately for the entire year. By ensuring the two are locked, you can validate if you are reaching the people you originally set out to reach.

2. Use Q1 as a window for discovery and learning — but be ready to act.

Q1 is where learnings should translate quickly into optimization.

• Activate your test-and-learn strategy: Develop a formal process to target, measure, and optimize campaigns.
• Loop in your data partner early: Share your test-and-learn strategy with your data partner so they can provide proactive recommendations and help you make optimization decisions.
• Move quickly from insight to action: Optimization delayed is value lost. Acting quickly and decisively in Q1 will accelerate positive gains.

3. Expand your success to all platforms.

Performance suffers when channels operate in silos.

• Double-down on high-performing audiences: Apply proven segments consistently across channels to maximize efficiency.
• Use more measurable media to inform less measurable media: Programmatic and CTV teams will see learnings faster and can share insights with social and addressable TV teams so they can optimize sooner and gain a jump start on positive performance.

The goal of Q1 is to identify campaign strategies that maximize performance so you can scale with confidence. By building a strong foundation early, you will set your campaigns up for high performance throughout the year.

Once you’ve validated your Q1 strategy, take the next step to audit the distribution food chain — the path that your audience segments take from data provider to final impression — to ensure that systemic noise isn’t diluting your audience precision.