Drugs, USA: +3% of advertising spending in 2018, Pfizer first advertiser

Pharmaceutical industry spending on advertising increased 3% last year in the United States to a record $6.4 billion, according to Nielsen data. The top five advertisers are Pfizer, AbbVie, Eli Lilly, Amgen and AstraZeneca. Pfizer took the top spot with $1.1 billion in ad spend, double the amount incurred by second-place finisher, Abbvie. The majority of this amount went to television commercials, amounting to $5.1 billion, about 80% of the total.

Spending on advertising on the small screen - reports 'MedicalMarketingMedia' - is followed in size by that for promotion in magazines, equal to 1 billion dollars, and by digital one at 197 million. This last item decreased by 18% compared to the previous year, 2017, while television advertising expenditure increased by 8.5%. Newspaper announcements, after a slight increase recorded in 2017, showed a sharp decline, equal to 38%.

Surprisingly, industry spending on film advertising tripled in 2018 to $11 million, surpassing that for outdoor ads. Eli Lilly's diabetes drug Trulicity* is the most advertised brand (moreover, for some time, with commercials that also refer to websites that indicate the prices of the treatment): 243 million dollars spent by the Indianapolis giant in 2018. Followed by the anti-smoking Chantix* by Pfizer, the anti-psoriasis Otezla* by Celgene, the immunotherapy Keytruda* by Msd and the anti-arthritis Xeljanz* also by Pfizer.

Related news: Nielsen: Pfizer tops list of biggest pharma advertisers in 2018