Pfizer Continues to Dominate DTC Ad Spending

If Pfizer chose not to do direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising, we'd have less bad ads to criticize (as, for example, this ad for Viagra) and the total spending on DTC advertising would be 30% less than it is today. In 2014, Nielsen estimates that the U.S. drug industry spent $4.53 Bn on DTC advertising. Pfizer spent $1.4 Bn.

That's right... Pfizer spends nearly one-third (30%) of all the DTC ad dollars!

The last (red) bar of the following chart shows what the 2014 ad spend -- excluding Internet search ads -- would look like without Pfizer. We're talking 20th century numbers!

Pfizer simply is too big to fail as far as the DTC advertising world is concerned!

According to Bloomberg (here), Pfizer spent "$751.9 million on television ads, more than double second-biggest spender AbbVie Inc." This domination of the drug ad airways goes back to at least 2011 as shown in the charts prepared by Bloomberg.

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