What happened to those TV ads for Viagra and Cialis?
There's a reason the Trump administration wants to require drugmakers to include list prices in advertisements for prescription medicines on TV: It's where the money is.
There's a reason the Trump administration wants to require drugmakers to include list prices in advertisements for prescription medicines on TV: It's where the money is.
In recent years, direct-to-consumer advertising has touted to consumers prescription medicines for relatively common ailments like high cholesterol or impotence. Think Lipitor (atorvastatin) or Viagra (sildenafil). While pharma has never liked the idea of price disclosure, the cost of drugs previously most familiar to the American public are nowhere near the cost of the most commonly advertised products today.
Patent expirations, along with the rise of specialty drugs and biologics, have shifted the line-up of drugs consumers are likely to see hawked on TV.
In 2018, a traditional 60-second spot is likely to come from one of a handful of large pharmas and feature a specialty medicine approved for sale in the past five years. Gone are the twin bathtubs and little blue pills, replaced instead with promotions for new psoriasis biologics and cancer drugs.
Spending, though, remains high. Through the first nine months of this year, pharma companies have spent more than $2.8 billion on TV drug ads, up from around $2.5 billion through the same time period last year, according to analytics firm iSpot.tv.
Here are five common themes among the top ranks of pharma TV advertising:
A handful of drugmakers account for the lion's share of drug ads on TV
In proposing to mandate inclusion of prices in drugs ads last week, the Department of Health and Human Services estimated its rule would affect roughly 25 drugmakers that air about 300 commercials a quarter.
Data from iSpot.tv, though, shows that the number of pharma companies putting up serious money on television drug ads is an even narrower group.
Spending by Pfizer, Eli Lilly, AbbVie and Bristol-Myers Squib, for example, represented about 40% of the $2.81 billion spent on TV drug ads through the first nine months of 2018, according to an analysis of iSpot.tv numbers
AbbVie's investment in promoting its blockbuster drug Humira (adalimumab) made up 8.5% of the total just by itself.
Viagra no more: The changing face of drug ads on TV | Healthcare Dive: Healthcare
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