Prescription Drug Adspend Continues Its Love Affair With Dinosaur Media

For the last couple of years, whenever I've talked to DTC brand managers about where their ad budgets are going they tell me 'on the web.' The logic: Sophisticated marketers who want to closely track their patients also want to meet them on the web, where they can be engaged in more in-depth discussions about their health.

And for the last couple of years, I've occasionally produced a story that says, 'that may be so, but the category as a whole is still increasing its spend on dinosaur media, like network TV.'

This year, something changed. For my preview of the  upfront TV buying season in Brandweek this week, sources told me that yes, in fact, they're upping their spend generally on those old standbys—network TV and print.

There are a bunch of reasons for this, including the difficulty of advertising such highly regulated products in non-traditional media, measurability, and the relative youth and lack of sophistication of an industry that is only 10 years old.

But perhaps this year there's another reason: The looming DTC reform bill in the Senate. Could it be that brand managers have been told to spend it all while they still can?

Comments

[John mack]

Jim,

You might be interested in my take on this, which is exactly what you suggest:

See "Spend, Spend, Spend Before the End, End, End" at http://pharmamkting.blogspot.com/2007/03/spend-spend-spend-before-end-end-end.html

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