Determining How Much Pharma Spends on Internet vs. TV DTC Advertising is a Daunting Task!

I prepared the chart on the left for the Pharma Marketing News article "DTC Ad Spending Rises from the Grave," which was published this Monday. You should compare this version of the chart to the one I published here on Pharma Marketing Blog last week (here).

This chart says 5% of pharma's 2014 DTC ad budget went to the Internet (excluding search), whereas the previous version says only 3%.

This chart says 63% of the budget went to TV, whereas the previous version says 70%.

I'll ignore print for now.

Determining the exact amount that the pharmaceutical industry spends on advertising via different media (TV, print, Internet, etc.) is a daunting task. Numbers regarding pharma DTC spending come from two sources: Nielsen and Kantar Media. Both report "measured media" spending, which includes TV, magazines, news-papers, radio, outdoor, and Internet (display ads only, not including search). Kantar tracks over 3,000 media sources throughout the US and Canada, which is a different methodology than that used by Nielsen. As a result, the numbers from these sources often do not match (for more on that, read "Making Sense of Pharma DTC Spending Trends").

Why the Differences?

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