Category Archive: Prescription drug DTC marketing

DTC Study: Marketers misaligned with online health seeker needs

SUMMARY:

  • People are going online more and more to sarch for health information after seeing a DTC pharma TV spot.
  • Pharma websites are not consdiered a top resource for infromation on new products.
  • Cost is not that big of an issue for people who have health insurance.
  • It’s more about weighing the benefit against the potential side effects.
  • TV spots are the number one way people learn about new pharma products.
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Um, about that diabetes drug that helped patients lose weight

SUMMARY:

  • According to the NEJM “in participants with overweight or obesity, 2.4 mg of semaglutide once weekly plus lifestyle intervention was associated with sustained, clinically relevant reduction in body weight”.
  • In the clinical study, participants were enrolled in an “intensive” behavioral study with 8 weeks low-calorie diet.
  • Yet the media has led with “diabetes drug leads to major weight loss”.
  • Will doctors inform patients?
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Why TV will continue to be the first choice for DTC

SKIMMERS SUMMARY:

  • Google has vowed to block cookies completely on its Chrome browser, which is used by around 70 percent of the world’s desktop computer owners, by the beginning of 2022. 
  • Display ads are usually reported to have an overall click rate of about five clicks in ten thousand ads served. If you want to know why the web is so appallingly littered with ads, it’s because to get five clicks you have to run 10,000 ads. If that’s not bad enough, 60% of the clicks are reported to be mistakes.
  • In one test, data bought from a data broker was able to correctly intuit the sex of an individual 43% of the time. A cat flipping a coin would be right 50% of the time.
  • According to Nielsen traditional TV viewing (over-the-air and cable) account for about 2/3 of all TV viewing and streaming accounts for only about 25%. The rest of TV time is used for gaming. Despite all the hype about Netflix, it accounts for about 2% of TV viewing.
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DTC Managers guide to online ads

KEY POINTS:

  • Winston Churchill once said, “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
  • Display ads are usually reported to have an overall click rate of about five clicks in ten thousand ads served. If you want to know why the web is so appallingly littered with ads, it’s because to get five clicks you have to run 10,000 ads.
  •  60% of the clicks are reported to be mistakes.
  • You are more likely to complete Navy Seal training than click on a banner ad. According to research company Lumen, only 9% of banner ads are even noticed for a second.
  • Studies show that CTRs have little to no correlation to ad effectiveness, yet it is still the most widely utilized measurement (or Key Performance Indicator, in ad jargon) of online advertising performance.

Source: Bob Hoffman

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Time to rethink the objective of DTC marketing

QUICK READ: Only someone who is fooling themselves believes that life will go back to normal after the pandemic. The pandemic has affected healthcare dramatically as searches for health information beyond COVID, have skyrocketed and patients have become used to virtual health visits. DTC marketing needs to evolve if it’s to remain relevant as part of the brand objectives.

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