DTC Ad Spending Is On The Rise Again
4 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // December 8th, 2009 // 8:09 am
Direct-to-consumer spending was declining for the last few quarters, but came bounding back in the recently ended third quarter - rising 15 percent to $1.16 billion, according to DTC Perspectives, a consulting firm, which cited data from TNS Media Intelligence.
The increase apparently marks the first quarterly gain in DTC spending in nearly two years and, interestingly, contrasts significantly with the spending trend earlier this year, when DTC advertising slumped 6.4 percent between January and June, compared with the same period a year ago.
Not surprisingly, spending on the Internet rose the most, the firm reports, more than tripling between January and September to $221 million (display ads only). And more ads were placed in newspapers, which showed a 25 percent gain to $104 million during the same period.
DTC Perspectives writes that the leading advertisers by brand in the first nine months of 2009 were Lipitor (Pfizer), Abilify (Bristol-Myers Squibb/Otsuka America), Cymbalta (Eli Lilly) and Advair (GlaxoSmithKline) – each of which spent more than $125 million, according to TNS. Among brands “new” to mass DTC advertising in 2009, only Pristiq (Wyeth) ranked among the Top 20 advertisers on the TNS listing.
Evelyn Pringle
This news is just wonderful. I’m so sick of ads for psych drugs and ED drugs I could puke every time one comes on.
I get so disgusted that sometimes I turn the channel right in the middle of shows that I like.
And by the looks of this report, I’ll be doing it more often in the near future.
patrons99
Yeah. It’s shameless brainwashing of the public to promote the view that society needs a drug for anything and everything that ails us, and that we were designed to (or evolved to, if you prefer) require prescription pharmaceuticals percolating through our blood, to live a complete life. They want a drug dependent society. They want us to completely depend on them for a steady stream of new drugs, for “dis-eases” both real and imagined. They truly want a drug-dependent and dis-eased society. The present healthcare system promotes sickness, not wellness, because pharma is calling the tune.
Jaynesday
Patrons99, We need a reward system based on higher levels of “health” or lower levels of “drugs percolating through our veins”. Something in addition to the reward of just being healthy. I know, old discussion.
We should incentivize those that take care of themselves.
Difficult to administer of course but as long as we are throwing money at issues, I would rather pay billions to folks that are pushing to meet healthy standards rather than to those that are trying to find out how to get the next blockbuster drug for free.
What is the percentage of those that just choose to take a drug instead and what does that cost you and I? Somebody has crunched these numbers, haven’t they?
patrons99
Jaynesday,
You ask “what does that [drug taking] cost you and I?” and “somebody has crunched these numbers, haven’t they?”
You might be interested in an article I recently wrote for OpEdNews titled “Are Big Pharma and the PDUFA to Blame for Healthcare Mess?”
Pharma has paid some prominent economists to “crunch the numbers” and uses economic arguments as to societal benefit of such programs as the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (“PDUFA”). Alex Tabarrok, an economics professor at George Mason University, called the PDUFA “a shining example of Pareto optimal policy innovation” in 2006. I strongly disagree. I call it a Faustian bargain that violates 5th Amendment Equal Protection of the U.S. Constitution.