Direct to Consumer Advertising Across Healthy Ads
Healthy Ads allows Pharmaceutical Advertisers to run Direct to Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertising (sometimes referred to as DTCPA or DTC advertising) our network of publishers.
What is Direct to Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertising?
Direct to Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertising is generally directed toward the end user, i.e. patients, rather than healthcare professionals and refers to the marketing of pharmaceutical brands, products and devices.
The United States, New Zealand, Brazil and Hong Kong are the only countries that allow direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs, but Pharmaceutical Advertisers in other countries can bypass local restrictions by running general “disease awareness” campaigns that indirectly promote their products. For example, you might only learn about the pharmaceutical company running the campaign and the prescription brand being advertised when you visit the website mentioned in the campaign ie “diseasename.com”.
Direct to Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertising of drugs has been legal in the USA since 1985, but only really took off in 1997 when the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) eased up on a rule obliging companies to offer a detailed list of side-effects in their infomercials (long format television commercials).
Accepted forms of Direct to Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertising
According to the US Food and Drug Administration, there are generally speaking three accepted forms of Direct to Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertising;
| Ad Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Product Claim Ad | Names a drug and the indication(s); makes claims regarding safety and efficacy |
| Reminder Ad | Names a drug, dosage form, and possibly cost, but not its uses |
| Help Seeking Ad | Describes a disease or condition but doesn’t mention a specific drug that treats it |
Targeting Consumers
Pharmaceutical Advertisers running Direct to Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertising need to be careful they are not using any sort of declared health related date when targeting consumers online. Healthy Ads always recommends applying general targeting only like age, sex, demographic or contextual targeting.
Healthy Ads works with the world’s biggest Pharmaceutical Advertisers. Many of these pharmaceutical brands are running Direct-to-Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertising campaigns as part of their overall media mix.
Many Pharmaceutical Advertisers run very generic targeting like Geo Targeting or Demographic Targeting as they are required to adhere to local pharmaceutical advertising regulations, such as not targeting individuals with known medical conditions.
Below are some of the Pharmaceutical Advertisers we’ve run programmatically over the last 30 Days.
