- Johnson & Johnson
- GlaxoSmithKline
- Pfizer
- Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.
- Eli Lilly & Co.
- Bayer
- Schering-Plough Corp.
- Merck & Co.
- Wyeth
- AstraZeneca
- Novartis
- Boehringer Ingelheim
- Abbott Laboratories
- Sanofi-Aventis
NOTE: P&G, which is primarily a packaged goods company and one of the biggest ad spenders in the US, is not included on this list even though it may market a few pharma products. It was also not included in last year's analysis (see "Marketing Mix of Leading Pharma Advertisers").
The total spend for these 14 pharma companies in 2008 was $6,993,000,000 measured vs. an estimated $5,697,500,000 unmeasured. That represents 12.4% of the total spending in 2008 of the entire group of AdAge's TOP 100 National Advertisers. NOTE: Not all of this represents direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising. Magazines, for example, include B-2-B publications (ie, medical journals focused on physicians).
I plotted the media mix for pharma advertisers vs. non-pharma companies in the list and came up with this (click on the image for a larger view):
Compare this to last year's data (see "Marketing Mix of Leading Pharma Advertisers") and weep:
Internet display ad spending still represents a very small portion of pharma's measured media spending (2.4% in 2008 vs. 3.1% in 2007). Non-pharma companies allocate twice as much of their budgets to the Internet than do pharma companies.Two pharma companies -- Abbott and AstraZeneca -- stand out from the pack in terms of the percent of their budgets allocated to Internet advertising in 2008 (see figure below; click for an enlarged view).
Intesting analysis - I like the visuals. It may also be interesting to consider how much of this spend was for OTC compared to Pharma products.
ReplyDeleteTo be clear, both require a significant investment in marketing spend. However, each require a very different strategy and set of tactics and potentially different allocation of marketing resources.
So I took the top 5 in the list of 14 you have above and calculated a poor-data-person's ratio OTC sales to Pharma sales, based on the companies 2008 annual reports. I applied that ratio to the total ad spend. Based on that, J n J still is the biggest spender in Pharma, but by something like a billion dollars less than what is listed above. Also based on that crude analysis, GSK may actually be spending more on Pharma ads on TV (all TV outlets combined) than J n J.
Of course, someone out there must have a better dataset than my back of the envelop calculation. But I thought I'd add my thoughts on this.
Shwe,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your analysis.
I understand that Bob Ehrlich -- publisher of DTC Perspectives -- has a new publication for OTC. Perhaps he will publish some interesting data we can use for comparison.
John
I think the data bodes well for DTC and physician-targeted DOOH-health TV networks. Eventhough the outdoor sector barely hits the radar. I think pharma has an unrecognized opportunity to retask readily available Broadcast-TV DTC creative to extend their messages and product promotions to place-based medical TV networks. I mean, what more targeted media channel can you spend DTC budgets on than a narrowcast TV network that directly promotes your product, and has the ability to educate patients at a time when key health questions and decisions are being considered. I also think the place-based medical TV networks is a tremendous opportunity for the top 14 companies to promote the public health relevancy or ajacency of their products (e.g. a :30 second spot on speaking with your HCP about diabetes, hypertension, HIV, cancer, arthritis), improving health literacy-dialogue with your HCP. Its basically a 2-fur-1.
ReplyDelete