Drugs.com experience reflects reported boom in pharmaceutical advertising

Free, online drug information portal says surge in drug company advertising requests endorses recent reports indicating and projecting major growth in DTC pharmaceutical ad expenditure, with a trend to greater use of the Web.

WILMINGTON, DELAWARE, 5 November, 2002

Yes, prescription drug advertising is definitely on a major up-trend, reports the Internets most objective pharmaceutical information site. And so is use of the Internet as a key information resource by both patients and busy health care professionals.

Drugs.com, an independent online database containing information on over 24,000 prescription medicines, says it has noted a marked increase in advertising and sponsorship requests by leading pharmaceutical marketers since the middle of this year.

This trend echoes the findings of a clutch of recent research reports which highlight, variously: a projected surge in drug company advertising investment of more than 20 percent over last year; strong public awareness of drug advertising in all media; and an impossible-to-ignore growth in reliance on the Internet as an authoritative source of medical treatment information.

Information -- the thirst for it -- is the driving force behind all these developments," said Drugs.com spokesman Paul Seaman. Our 20 percent monthly growth in new website traffic endorses the findings of Vividence Corporation, which reported that the Web often acts as a substitute for physicians, in that consumers search online regarding medical conditions before they are formally diagnosed (71%), as well as after they receive a prescription (62%).

Vividence, which specializes in online customer experience management services, also found that consumers are just as likely to go to the Internet to get information when they first start experiencing symptoms (75%), as they are to go to a physician (77%)," he said.

Drugs.com (www.drugs.com), in its present form, celebrates its first anniversary this month, with implementation of a revolutionary, new internal search functionality. The high-profile domain name changed hands for $1 million dollars in June, 2001, and the Web portal was launched last November.

Paul Seaman says that steady, substantial gains in both visitor traffic and search engine rankings have fully justified the investment, and now the site is seen by many companies as a viable candidate for a share of their advertising and sponsorship budgets.

'Media Post (www.mediapost.com) on October 23 reported research firm Cutting Edge Information as predicting a doubling of pharmaceutical expenditure on advertising to both consumers and professionals over the next four to five years.

Also cited: a recent study by Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), which concludes that since the Federal Drug Administration's relaxation on pharmaceutical advertising guidelines in 1997, targeted consumer advertising -- worth around $2.8 billion in 2001 -- has positively impacted consumer awareness of pharmaceutical products.

However, consumer perceptions of DTC advertisements are mixed. Two-thirds of those surveyed indicate that DTC television advertisements are incomplete and 47% find the ads confusing. IRI expects the Internet to benefit from the pharmaceutical commitment, because: It is the perfect medium for this category. It has no limit in terms of the amount of information it can include. It encourages communication".

The Vividence study, which recruited consumers to interact with both brand-specific and general medical information sites, and tracked every click and comment, showed that the Web is a vital component of the marketing strategy of any pharmaceutical or healthcare-related company.

Consumers turn to the Internet for medical information, often seeking out specific brand-name drug sites and, if satisfied, use this information to request specific drug names from their physicians, increasing sales for pharmaceutical companies. [Studies have demonstrated that doctors tend to prescribe the drugs that patients request almost 90 percent of the time." -- Yarmoff, Louise Bullis, 'Healthy Sales, CRM Magazine, February 2001].

However, the report noted that consumers were worried about the credibility of the information on branded drug sites, and were concerned that a drug's benefits might be overstated due to the source of the information.

Vividence recommends that pharmaceutical sites should also consider providing or linking to information from independent sources to help strengthen the credibility of a branded drug site.

It says that the propensity to go to the Web before a diagnosis, and before a drug is prescribed, suggests that pharmaceutical companies may strongly benefit from a more general presence on the web by sponsoring more general medical information sites or condition-specific sites.

Vividence found that consumers like getting detailed information about the condition and the drug from the website, especially information that they may not have gotten from their doctor or pharmacist due to time limitations, such as a complete list of side effects and contraindications for the medication.

In addition, they appreciate more general information about the condition and how the medication fits into the landscape of potential treatments. This information helps promote credibility and trust in the website's information.

Research shows that behavioral patterns usually differ according to the level of knowledge of the user. General information may have little appeal to knowledgeable specialists, who may skip medical portals to find more specific articles through search engines. General practitioners and patients, on the other hand, may rely more on general portal sites to provide structure and guidance to their search for information.

Thats where sites like ours come in," says Drugs.coms Paul Seaman. If a significant proportion of information-seeking traffic is making a general site its first 'portal of call -- and theres no doubt that this is the case -- then it makes pretty smart sense to place signposts there that will help direct traffic to brand-specific sites.

From the amount of advertising and sponsorship interest Drugs.com has been getting lately, it seems that several major drug companies, and their ad agencies, go along with that proposition."

-- ends --

ABOUT DRUGS.COM (www.drugs.com): Drugs.com is a free, online information resource developed and operated by the Drugsite Trust. The website provides a regularly-updated database of over 24,000 FDA-approved prescription and over-the-counter medications, supplied by Micromedex and Multum in forms suitable for reference by both consumers and qualified health care professionals. Additional services include a Drug Interactions checker, photographic Pill Identifier and Pill Image Library, Patient Care Guide, and listings of latest FDA new drug approvals and drug safety alerts.