Yet another survey comes out today that purports to show that the drug business is "embracing online media to
build relationships with consumers and is cutting back on traditional
broadcast and print media to promote drugs."
Regular readers will know that the myth of declining traditional adspend is an old saw on this blog.
This latest claim is from Dendrite, which claims that "national TV, spot TV, radio and direct mail will top the list for decreased spending."
There are, of course, a couple of slightly larger "surveys" of drug company adspend. One is called Nielsen Monitor-Plus (disclosure: Nielsen owns this blog) and the other is Nielsen's main competitor, TNS Media Intelligence. And both of those companies say that DTC adspend is still going up.
Yes, the percentage increase is in slight decline -- but now that DTC spend is about $4.5 billion a year, you would expect that. The actual dollar increases are still huge.
And yes, there have been some high profile examples of companies reducing their spend, such as J&J. But as I pointed our earlier this year, J&J is going against the flow of dollars, not with it.
The reality is that as brands move through their patent-controlled lifecycles, their spending waxes and wanes. Some larger spenders may pull back. But the underlying trend is that many more smaller brands will come on to the market, more than making up the shortfall.
It is true that online may take up more gross dollars and a larger portion of the marketing mix pie. But the idea that traditional DTC is in decline is plain wrong.
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