In a recent issue of JAMA Network Open, Aaron Kesselheim and colleagues published the results of a study showing that some of the most heavily advertised drugs are essentially no better at treating disease than other options. Almost two dozen complaints submitted to the FCC focused on the number of pharma ads on TV, with consumers arguing that there were “simply too many.”
Category Archive: DTC Spending
I could argue strongly that patients have changed how they make healthcare treatment decisions based on what happened over the last three years. Research found that 61 percent of participants trusted the pharmaceutical sector, but despite this increase, the pharma sector is the least trusted subsector of healthcare. The question then becomes, “do people trust DTC marketing?”.
The most important job of any DTC team is selling DTC internally to people who need help understanding its importance. Our job is to educate the skeptics by helping them understand how and why people are making treatment decisions. Here are some helpful pointers.
(Fierce Pharma) A fresh slice of data from Standard Media Index suggests that might be the case, revealing spending on linear TV fell for the first time in years and that digital’s share of the media mix passed 50%. Here are the reasons for the decline.
The path between awareness and getting an Rx for an advertised brand is becoming increasingly complex. Reach, and frequency is irrelevant in an age when insurance companies and PBMs dictate what they will cover. DTC marketing can be effective, but it has to provide more answers instead of leading to questions.
DTC marketing via TV is a great way to inform patients that a new treatment is available for health conditions with large patient populations. But what happens when your patient population consists of 200,000 people? Will DTC work? Yes, it can, but only if you understand your audience in-depth.
What happened to journalists that actually think? The latest is “fewer than one-third of the most common drugs featured in direct-to-consumer television advertising were rated as having high therapeutic value.” Really? Did they ever think patients have a choice about what’s considered “therapeutic value”?
There is no doubt that the digital environment is going through a shakeout. Except for TikTok, social media use is declining, and even Amazon is finding out that technology can’t lead to more profits. The way people search for health information has plateaued, but Dr. Internet will still be the first place many people look for health information. Here are some things some DTC marketers should focus on.