How do clinical trials actually reach patients?
By Bryan Manning, Founder · Updated August 2026
Direct answer: At consumer scale, because eligible patients are rare and nobody is telling them trials exist. One recent program of ours generated 15.6 million social media impressions, reached 3.2 million people, and drove 584,213 visits to a website built for that one study. Of those visitors, 19,715 went on to complete a pre-screen. If those numbers sound enormous for a single trial, that’s the point: finding the right patients is a reach problem long before it’s a screening problem.
Why it takes millions of impressions to fill one trial
Three reasons, and none of them are fixable with a bigger site list.
Eligible patients are genuinely rare. Take any condition, then subtract everyone outside the age window, everyone on an excluded medication, everyone with a disqualifying comorbidity, everyone too far from a site. What’s left is a sliver of a sliver. To find a sliver, you have to put the trial in front of the whole population and let screening do its work.
Physician referral doesn’t scale. Most patients never hear about a trial from their doctor. Physicians are busy, referral isn’t reimbursed, and no single practice sees enough eligible patients to fill a study. Every sponsor who has waited on organic site referrals has watched an enrollment curve flatline.
The patients you’re missing aren’t looking for you. Trials that rely on people who already search for research skew toward the most connected, most health-literate patients. Reaching everyone else means going where they already spend time, which today is social feeds. It’s a big part of how 32% of the patients we enroll come from under-represented populations.
What the machine actually is
A website built for the study, not the sponsor. The program above ran on a purpose-built site that spoke directly to people living with the condition: what the study involves, who it’s for, and a simple web screen to start qualification. Not a corporate page with a “find a trial” dropdown.
Creative that tells a patient’s story. Protocol language doesn’t stop a thumb mid-scroll. Someone describing life with the condition does. Authentic, emotional, informative story content is the difference between an impression and a click, in every therapeutic area we’ve worked.
Ad buying that treats patients like people. Precise audience building, continuous creative testing, and reporting pulled straight from the platforms so a sponsor can see reach, engagement, and cost in one place, live.
A screen that starts the real work. About 3.4% of that program’s site visitors completed the pre-screen. That percentage is healthy. The web screen’s job isn’t to maximize completions, it’s to start a qualification process honest enough that sites only ever meet patients worth meeting. What happens after the screen, the 87-second callbacks and the double-screening, is its own article.
The honest caveat: reach without follow-through is a bonfire
Scale is necessary and insufficient. Millions of impressions produce interest; only fast, human follow-through converts interest into enrolled patients. An ad campaign feeding a slow callback process is the most expensive way to disappoint people at scale. If you buy reach, buy the follow-through with it, from us or from anyone.
Frequently asked questions
Can’t our sites just find patients from their own databases?
Site databases help and we want sites using them. They’re also finite, aging, and shared across every trial the site runs. Reach advertising is how you get beyond the patients every sponsor is already competing for.
Does social media advertising work for older patients?
Yes. It’s where their communities, caregivers, and adult children are too, and caregivers are often the ones who complete the screen. Story-first creative works across age groups; protocol-first creative works for none of them.
Why build a custom website for one trial?
Because the ad click is a moment of trust, and landing someone on a generic corporate page spends it. A study-specific site answers the three questions every patient has (is this for me, is it safe, what happens next) and starts qualification in the same visit.
How many impressions does a trial need?
It varies by condition prevalence, criteria tightness, and geography, from low millions to tens of millions across a program’s life. The better question for any vendor: show me reach, engagement, and screen volume for a program like mine, and show me what you do in the first two minutes after a patient raises their hand.
Enrollment on the line?
Most firms recruit patients. We deliver enrollments. We take ownership of the whole path, from first click to site visit, and we only get paid when patients enroll.