What US telehealth taught us about healthcare ads

Healthcare is one of the hardest things to sell with ads. People are careful with their health, careful with their money and careful about who they trust. Online, there is no waiting room to walk into and no receptionist to reassure them. The whole decision happens on a screen.

We have run ads and built websites for two telehealth brands in the United States, and we have run lead campaigns for a diagnostic lab chain in Kerala. The markets are very different. The lesson is the same: in healthcare, the ad is the easy part. What happens after the click, on the page or on the phone, decides whether you win a patient. And the only fair way to judge it is by what people pay.

Two telehealth brands, one crowded market

Telehealth is healthcare delivered online: the patient finds a provider, pays and speaks to a clinician without visiting a clinic. Both brands we worked with sell in digital healthcare in the US, an intensely crowded market where each new customer is hard and costly to win. Ad space is sold by auction, so more companies chasing the same people means a higher price for every ad shown.

For both the first telehealth brand and the second telehealth brand, we did two jobs: we developed the website, and we ran the performance ad campaigns that send people to it.

The first figures cover the first two months of scaling, the stage when the aim is to spend more while keeping the return steady. For every dollar spent on ads, about $2.60 came back in purchases. The second brand's figures cover one full month: each dollar of ad spend brought back just over two dollars in purchases.

Here is what those two brands taught us.

Lesson one: the page wins the sale

In a crowded market, you pay a high price to bring someone to your site. If the page then looks thin, unclear or different from what the ad promised, you lose them, and the money with them.

That is why we built the websites as well as running the ads. When two suppliers split this work, the ad can promise one thing while the page says another, and a weak month turns into an argument about whose fault it was. With one team, the ad and the page are planned as a single path to a purchase. Every hand-off between suppliers is a place where a visitor can be lost: a slow page, an offer that does not match the ad, a broken link. Fewer hand-offs mean fewer of those places.

In a clinic, the front desk explains, reassures and books the patient in. Online, the website has to do all three on its own.

The ad pays for the visit. The page has to win the sale.

Lesson two: trust comes before the price

A patient choosing an online provider is trusting a brand they cannot walk into, often after seeing several rivals in the same week. People want to trust a provider before they pay. That trust has to be earned first by the ad and then by the website.

Privacy is part of that trust. Health is personal, and people notice when a business asks for more than it seems to need. We do not give legal advice, and this post does not cover the rules on health data or ad tracking. Before you launch, ask your own legal adviser what you may collect, track and share. Then, as a general habit, keep your ads about the service rather than the person seeing them, ask only for what you need, and explain clearly on the page what happens next.

Lesson three: measure purchases, over a fair period

Clicks, visits and sign-ups can all look healthy while sales stay flat. For both telehealth brands, results were counted at the purchase, so the number could not flatter itself.

Return on ad spend is purchase revenue divided by ad spend. Below 1x, the ads cost more than they brought in. The second brand's 2.02x means the ads covered their cost within the month and then earned that much again. But revenue is not profit. The first brand's $33,142.20 is gross, before the brand's own costs.

Timing matters too. People often weigh a health purchase over days rather than minutes. Judging results over a full month gives slower buyers time to come back, and takes in the quiet days as well as the busy ones.

The India contrast: when the sale happens on the phone

A diagnostic lab chain in Kerala shows the same lesson from the other side. Here the sale did not happen on a website. It happened in a conversation.

Diagnostics is local. People get tested near where they live or work, and they often book with the lab that replies first. So we ran three Meta campaigns focused on high-priority local zones, two of them bringing in message leads, and built a lead handoff system so the chain's telecalling team could respond quickly and track every lead.

In August 2025, ₹26,886.65 of ads brought 355 qualified leads, at about ₹75.74 each, and about ₹2 lakh in revenue came in within the first 30 days. The cost per lead ranged from about ₹64.92 on the third campaign to ₹88.67 on the second.

For the US brands, the website had to win trust and close the sale. For the lab chain, the callback did that job. Either way, the ad only starts the process. The business has to finish it.

Before you spend on healthcare ads

• Decide where the sale happens. On your website, on the phone or in a chat. Then make that step as strong as the ad.
• Build the page and the ads together. Make sure the page answers the questions the ad raises, and says the same thing.
• Ask your legal adviser first. Check what you may collect, track and share before any campaign goes live.
• Judge on purchases or bookings. Not on clicks or cheap leads.
• Give careful buyers time. Judge results over a period long enough to include people who think before they pay.
• Know your real margin. Subtract the cost of delivering the service, and consider what a returning patient is worth to you.

Questions business owners ask

What is a good return on ad spend for a telehealth brand?

There is no single right figure. Above 1x, ads bring in more than they cost; below it, they lose money. Our two US telehealth brands saw 2.6x and 2.02x. From there, take away the cost of delivering the service, because revenue is not profit, and ask what a patient is worth over time. In much of telehealth a first purchase leads to follow-ups, so only your own figures can answer the last step.

Should the same team build my website and run my ads?

In healthcare, we think so. The page is where trust is won or lost, and the people running the ads know what the ad promised. When one team owns both, there is no gap between the promise and the page.

How long should we run healthcare ads before judging them?

Long enough to include careful buyers. A month takes in both slow deciders and quiet days, so the result is not cut short by an early deadline.

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