Drugmakers Lift Ad Spending 9 Pct
October 05, 2006

Pharmaceutical Ads Rose 9 Percent in First Half, With Magazines Grabbing a Bigger Share

Pharmaceutical companies boosted advertising spending by 9 percent in the first half of this year, suggesting they no longer feel constrained by complaints raised after the landmark withdrawal of the pain medicine Vioxx.

Spending rose to $2.46 billion in the six-month period as drugmakers devoted larger portions of their budgets to magazine ads and poured more funds into campaigns to promote their images and disease awareness, according to TNS Media Intelligence. In the first six months of 2005, spending was essentially flat at $2.26 billion

The Vioxx withdrawal in late 2004 cast a pall over pharmaceutical advertising as critics claimed drug makers' splashy campaigns minimized medicines' risks. Vioxx was a heavily advertised Merck & Co. pain reliever that was found to increase patients' risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Earlier this year, the pharmaceutical industry adopted voluntary guidelines to improve the accuracy and balance of ads so the severity of drugs' side effects aren't whitewashed. That is easier to accomplish in magazine ads so drug makers are using that medium more frequently, TNS research director Jon Swallen said Thursday.

In the first six months of this year, magazines grabbed 34 percent of total spent advertising drugs, up from 29 percent in the year-ago period. Television ads captured 59 percent of the ad budgets, down from 64 percent a year ago. And newspapers accounted for 3 percent of the total spending, essentially flat with the 2.9 percent in the year-ago period.

Swallen said after retrenching in 2005, companies are slowly rebuilding their advertising budgets as some of the anger over commercials has subsided. "They are creeping back," he said.

The ads also look different. Many campaigns now feature doctors bluntly describing the risks of side effect.

In addition, companies are following through on promises to delay the kickoffs of advertising campaigns. TNS found they now start on average 15 months after a drug's approval, up from a gap of between six and nine months in 2004.

As criticism of drug ads mounted, last year Pfizer Inc. pledged not to directly advertise its new drugs to consumers for at least six months so doctors have an opportunity to learn about the medications before having to answer patient questions generated by commercials. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. promised not to advertise it products directly to patients for a year.

Some of this year's increase in spending may be tied to new campaigns for erectile dsyfunction drugs. The makers of all three products -- Pfizer's Viagra, Cialis from Eli Lilly and Co. and ICOS Corp. and Levitra, marketed by GlaxoSmithKline PLC and Schering-Plough Corp -- launched new TV campaigns in the first half of the year.