Pharmaceutical Industry

Pharma Spends More on Detailing than DTC Advertising

Just call it the Energizer Bunny. Despite drawing fire from consumer groups, legislators and other concerned critics wanting to curb it, direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising keeps on going. Yet promotion to professionals still draws the lion's share of promotional spending, according to a study in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Total spending on DTC advertising in the U.S. increased from about $1 million in 1996 to $4 billion in 2005. Yet only 14 percent of total industry expenditures on pharmaceutical promotion were devoted to DTC advertising in 2005, the study found. As a percentage of sales, it was only 2.6 percent.

While investments in detailing and journals ads have dwindled in recent years, personal selling and free samples still command the biggest chunk of the promotional budget, accounting for some $25 billion. (For samples the figure is calculated by retail value.) When journal adverts are factored in, that's about 86 percent of spending.

Some drugs in top-selling classes, such as antidepressants and antipsychotics, are promoted mostly via reps. As for which drug categories relied heaviest on DTC, they found that DTC consumed about a third of the budget for proton-pump inhibitors, statins and erythropoietin drugs.

Source: Marc Iskowitz, Medical Marketing & Media, August 2007