From Visibility to Meaning
In oncology, being known is no longer enough.
The 2026 benchmark explores what separates companies once awareness is already high — and why competitive advantage increasingly lies not in how often a company appears, but in what physicians take away when it does.
We looked beyond visibility.
Twelve companies, assessed on twenty measures each, in five European markets, by the same 155 oncologists. One field, one questionnaire, every company scored on identical terms — not a tracker of any one company’s own numbers.
- France
- Germany
- Italy
- Spain
- United Kingdom
- For years“Do physicians know us?”
- TodayThat question is becoming less useful.
- The question now“What do physicians actually know about us?”
Being known is no longer enough.
Most companies in the field are already on physicians’ radar. But awareness and genuine familiarity are not the same thing — and the benchmark shows that depth of knowledge, not how far a name travels, is where the market separates.
Nearly the whole field clears the bar. Little separates one company from another.
Ask what physicians actually know, and the field thins out sharply.
Awareness tells you who has appeared. Familiarity tells you who has landed.
The full benchmark shows how sharply the field separates once awareness gives way to familiarity — and where each of the twelve companies sits on both.
The same visibility number can hide two different problems.
Two companies can carry comparable overall visibility while struggling with completely different things underneath it. One may need to be seen by more people. The other may need its content to do more once people see it.
Visible across the market, but it doesn't get people to act. A content and relevance problem.
Visible to fewer people, but converts strongly among them. A scale problem.
On a single visibility metric these companies look comparable. Strategically, they are not.
The complete analysis shows which of the twelve companies has which problem — and how far apart they are on each dimension.
The competitive question has changed.
Read together, the two findings point one way. This category has moved from a volume problem to a content problem. Visibility gets a company into the conversation; what happens next increasingly determines its standing.
The company appears in front of the physician. Almost everyone in the field clears this.
The physician can say what the company stands for. Fewer companies get here.
The company comes to mind when it matters. Fewer still.
Visibility gets you into the conversation. Meaning determines what you get out of it.
A settled top two. An unclaimed third.
Two companies have separated from the field on the measures that carry corporate standing — one decisively, the other consistently without ever leading. Behind them the field closes up again: five companies sit within a quarter of a standard deviation of one another, and none has broken away.
That makes third place the live question. It is not held by anyone, and from inside the pack the distance to it is far shorter than the top line suggests. The alternative is to stop competing on overall standing altogether and own one dimension of the field outright.
Two positions are settled. The pack behind them is not — and nobody has yet moved into the space above it.
There is still room to move.
The report shows the competitive picture in full: every company named, the distance between them on all twenty measures — and the one measure where the order breaks entirely, and the leader does not lead.
Three questions most companies can't yet answer.
Do physicians understand you — or just recognise you?
From the outside, the two look identical. They are not the same thing, and only one of them still works as a competitive advantage.
If your numbers moved next quarter, would you know why?
A single headline figure can hide more than one underlying problem — and from a distance, they all look the same.
Is your outreach building standing, or just adding activity?
The two aren't the same, and most companies can't yet tell them apart in their own numbers.
See where your company stands.
The full benchmark covers the complete set of twenty measures across twelve companies and five markets, with every company named and every figure scored on identical terms.
Not sure yet whether the full benchmark is what you need? Get in touch — happy to answer questions about the approach before you decide.