Health tourism advertising: a compliant channel plan
Health tourism advertising channel by channel: a compliance table built on the domestic/international split under the 12.11.2025 regulation and platform rules.
By Roozbeh Nazari · CEO
A clinic planning health tourism advertising should not start with "which channel converts best"; the first question is "is advertising on this channel, with this message, to this audience compliant with the regulation". In Türkiye, promotional activity by healthcare providers is governed by the Regulation on Promotion and Information Activities in Health Services, published in the Official Gazette of 12 November 2025, issue 33075; it repealed the 2023 regulation that preceded it. On top of it sit platform policies: Google Ads' healthcare policy, Meta's advertising standards, and the rules of each target country. This article offers a channel-by-channel plan template that puts the "domestic" versus "international" split first for every channel. We covered how to split budget between channels separately, in Google Ads and Meta budget split; here we are in the compliance layer that comes before budget.
The backbone of the plan: domestic and international are two different worlds
As we read the regulation, two provisions define the backbone of the plan; verify both with your legal counsel against the current text. First, sponsored promotion aimed at the domestic audience is not available except by exception: Article 5 of the regulation allows sponsored promotion and information only for the first month of a newly opened facility and for new medical technologies approved by the Ministry. That takes the idea of an "advertising campaign" aimed at patients in Türkiye largely off the table. Second, Article 8 establishes a separate regime for international health tourism: promotion and information aimed abroad is to be run through a separate website or social media account, in a foreign language, without targeting the domestic audience, and carrying the HealthTürkiye brand on those channels. That is why the first column of the channel plan is not the channel name but the audience: every channel is assessed twice, once for domestic and once for international.
Limits that apply on every channel
Before going channel by channel, keep the prohibitions that apply everywhere in a single list, because the person writing the ad copy should be thinking about the regulation, not the platform. Article 5 prohibits explicit or implicit advertising, statements aimed at creating demand, price, discount and campaign information, sharing patient testimonials and thanks in an advertising manner, and claims of superiority over other providers; guaranteeing results is already prohibited at both the regulation and platform-policy level. Before-and-after images must be taken under the same conditions and technical settings and carry dates; under Article 7, user interactions such as comments, likes and reshares must be disabled on visual content. This list should become a pre-check form for your ad copy; we collected the general compliance rules for medical content in compliant medical content.
Channel 1: Search ads
For international patients, search advertising is the channel with the clearest intent: the person types the treatment and the city themselves. Google Ads' healthcare and medicines policy expects ads and landing pages to comply with applicable laws and industry standards; it bans some healthcare categories entirely and requires certification and country-specific conditions for others. Open a separate row for each target country in your plan: does Google restrict healthcare advertising in that country, what language is the landing page in, which claims are banned? The landing page must sit on the separate international site the regulation requires; an English ad pointing to the Turkish site breaks both targeting and compliance. In the domestic row this channel stays empty except for the exceptions; domestic demand is met through organic search, meaning informational content and technical SEO.
Channel 2: Meta, meaning Instagram and Facebook
Health advertising on Meta is restricted separately at the creative, targeting, landing page and measurement layers; we described a campaign setup that does not get rejected in Meta Ads health restrictions. From a channel-plan perspective there are two decisions. First, account separation: a separate account and a separate ad account for international audiences in a foreign language; the domestic account produces no sponsored content. Second, the creative pool: before-and-after images must satisfy the regulation's conditions and Meta's personal health and appearance rules at the same time; because the overlap is narrow, most clinics turn to process, team and facility storytelling in their international creatives. No targeting by personal health condition; interest and geography have to be enough.
Channel 3: Video and YouTube
Video is the channel that fits the regulation's definition of information most comfortably: content that explains the treatment process, preparation stages and risks can stay within information scope both domestically and abroad. For sponsored video the domestic-versus-international split applies again. Split video into two rows in your plan: organic informational videos are produced for both audiences; sponsored video is published only from the international account, in a foreign language and with international targeting. Video descriptions carry no prices, campaigns or patient thanks.
Channel 4: Influencers and patient stories
This channel is the most tempting and the riskiest. Using patient testimonials and thanks in an advertising manner is prohibited; an influencer describing their treatment experience under the clinic's name, when done for payment, falls squarely under that definition. Whether the same prohibition applies to the international account is an area that requires interpretation; mark this channel in your plan as "not opened without legal opinion". In practice the safe space is content in which the influencer describes the facility, the city and the process, not the condition or the result; even that is subject to the sponsored content rule.
Channel 5: Intermediaries and directories
International health tourism regulation organises patient arrivals through authorised intermediary organisations; the official promotion channels under the HealthTürkiye brand and the directories of authorised intermediaries provide a visibility layer that does not count as the clinic's own advertising. Define this row in the channel plan as "zero creative risk, limited control": the content is largely in a standard format, but conversion measurement depends on the attribution chain you build.
The channel plan table
Reduce the plan to a one-page table. Rows are channels; the columns are: audience (domestic or international), medium (which account, which site), language, permitted message type (information, process, facility, team), banned-list check (price, campaign, guarantee, patient testimonial, comparison), creative condition (before-and-after rule, interaction disabling), measurement (which conversion, which source tag) and approval (is legal opinion required). Every new campaign opens as a row in this table; no budget is released before the row is complete. Most domestic rows filling up with "organic" is normal, and it shows not that the plan failed but that you read the regulation correctly.
Working with a health tourism advertising agency
If you work with a health tourism advertising agency, you, not the agency, must own this table; the clinic is the party facing sanctions. We listed the criteria we use for choosing an agency in choosing an advertising agency. We describe how we work with clinics on the clinics page, and the setup and measurement side of paid channels on the paid media page. The same principle applies on both pages: the compliance layer comes before budget, and no channel opens before its row in the table is complete.