Pfizer, Eli Lilly and other pharmaceutical giants head to Washington DC to get advertising guidelines from the FDA...
By Militza Richard
The Internet, particularly social media, is the newest frontier in advertising, and pharmaceutical companies and federal regulators have finally noticed. As the Food and Drug Administration begins its first attempts at regulating the vast amounts of medical information available on the web, pharmaceutical companies are eager to advertise their products on sites such as Google and Twitter.
Pfizer and Eli Lilly, among others, are traveling to Washington for the FDA’s 2 day hearing, which begins today, on online marketing of prescription drugs.
The FDA has agreed to consider changing the rules for online advertising of prescription drugs. Current rules require a detailed list of possible side effects, a requirement which makes web ads difficult to produce and clunky to read.
While a few drug companies have begun advertising on social networking sites like Facebook and YouTube , they have largely steered clear of the internet for fear of violating federal regulations.
Last year, $10.9 billion was spent on online advertising, according to a report from PricewaterhouseCooper. Pharmaceutical companies represented only 4 percent of that number, despite the fact that 83 percent of Internet users report searching for health information online, according to a recent survey from the Pew Research Center.
"The first place that consumers turn when they have a health question today is the Internet. Yet pharmaceutical companies still spend the vast majority of their marketing in traditional media," said Wayne Gattinella, chief executive at WebMD .
Several of the web’s leading companies such as Google, Yahoo and WebMD Health are also attending the hearing in the hopes of capturing a bigger chunk of the pharmaceutical advertising market, one of the country’s largest ad categories.
The FDA has refused to comment on its plans, saying that the purpose of the hearing is to gather information. However, many expect that while existing regulations can address many kinds of web advertising, new guidelines will be needed for marketing on social media sites.
"Clearly when you look at the number of people on Twitter and Facebook, there is no doubt how people want to communicate," said Ray Kerins, vice president of world-wide communications at Pfizer. "This is a new medium, and we need guidelines so that we can educate patients and physicians in a safe and appropriate way."
Edited by Kevin Doyle