AstraZeneca - Top 13 Advertising Budgets

Company: AstraZeneca
2007 Ad Spending: $697.4 million
2006 Ad Spending: $1.06 billion

Breakdown 

• Magazines: $196.9 million
• Newspaper: $3.2 million
• Outdoor: $100,000
• TV: $55.6 million
• Radio: $2 million
• Internet: $21.3 million

Where AstraZeneca is spending money: Though AstraZeneca's ad budget shrank overall, the company did push up spending on two key drugs: Seroquel and Arimidex. Spending on Seroquel, the antipsychotic, grew to $41,876 from a negligible $1,782, and Arimidex's ads ran $34,230, up 35 percent. 

Investing in Seroquel apparently paid off, too: 2007 sales of the antipsychotic drug grew by 15 percent to over $4 billion. Total presciprtions in the U.S. increased by 10 percent, and Seroquel expanded its share of the U.S. antipsychotic market to 31.8 percent. The more modest push on Arimidex yielded a slightly more modest result, with a 13 percent increase in sales to $694 million. Total scrips for the cancer treatment grew by nearly 5.3 percent, compared with 1.3 percent in the overall market for hormonal breast cancer treatments.

Where AstraZeneca isn't spending money: Heavyweight cholesterol med Crestor saw its media support drop by two-thirds, to $56,174 from $185,860. And that cut still doesn't equal, proportion-wise, the major shrinkage in AstraZeneca's corporate image ads. That budget dropped by almost 80 percent to $19,784.

Turns out, Crestor didn't need help. U.S. sales ballooned by 24 percent, to $1.42 billion. And its scrips were way up, too: 22 percent growth, compared with an 8 percent increase in the overall statin market.