According to the statistics of Kantar Media, a U.S. media research and insight company, budgets of pharmaceutical companies for DTC ads are increasing year by year: the number of brands spending at least USD 50 million annually, as well as the number of brands spending over USD 100 million, have both more than doubled since 2012.

Top 10 prescription drug brands by DTC ad expenditure in 2016 (unit: USD 1 million)
|
Brand |
Enterprise |
2016 |
Growth rate |
|
Humira |
AbbVie |
439 |
20% |
|
Lyrica |
Pfizer |
392 |
19% |
|
Eliquis |
Pfizer |
296 |
17% |
|
Xeljanz |
Pfizer |
258 |
37% |
|
Opdivo |
BMS |
168 |
32% |
|
Viagra |
Pfizer |
156 |
15% |
|
Chantix |
Pfizer |
151 |
13% |
|
Cialis |
Eli Lilly |
150 |
-34% |
|
Trulicity |
Eli Lilly |
142 |
103% |
|
Prevnar |
Pfizer |
128 |
-7% |
From the above table, we can see that Pfizer spent most on DTC ad, with 6 brands listed in Top 10.
From the perspective of growth rate, the annual growth rate of expenditures of 8 brands reached double digit, and expenditures of all the top 10 exceeded USD 100 million; in addition, the growth rate of expenditures of newly marketed pharmaceutical products was much higher in 2016 than that in 2015.
What is DTC ad?
DTC refers to direct-to-consumer, namely, the DTC ad is ad direct to consumers. The details are introduced below:
We roughly know that prescription drug ads are not allowed to be delivered to the public and could only be delivered to professionals by professional medical media, which is a management measure made by the regulator after years of weighing the interests of each party. Let’s go back to the initial development period of pharmaceutical marketing, for example, before the 1980s in the U.S. on the other side...









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