Why Pharmaceutical Advertising Is Virtually Absent From the Web

Government inaction has caused the industry to lag behind

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Quick—think of the most recent digital ad you saw. Was it automotive? Retail? Most likely. Name almost any other category and the same probably holds true.

Brad Weltman

Also likely to be true? That the ad you saw wasn't pharmaceutical related, despite 2015 pharmaceutical spending matching the 2006 record level of $5.4 billion. That's up 19 percent from 2014. As ad dollars in every vertical continue to migrate to digital, why is advertising for prescription drugs targeted to consumers—also known as direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising—lagging behind?

It's not because Americans are not online. Data

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