Like other advertising channels, this year had its fair share of COVID vaccine-related television commercials. Companies such as Pfizer and BioNTech spent large amounts of TV dollars on campaigns highlighting “getting back to normal,” featuring loved ones reuniting after years apart.
Along that same theme, pharma advertisers increased their spend on advertisements for skin, scalp and autoimmune diseases, again appealing to patients’ need to get back out in public and to look and feel their best while doing it.
But what will the TV ads of 2023 look like as pharma marketing faces the country’s new normal and joins other industries in a shifting of dollars into digital campaigns?
Big spenders
When it comes to prescription brands, pharma TV ad spending grew 8% in 2022, reaching a total of $4.05 billion. Some of that growth was fueled by large increases in ad spend for specific categories of drugs, according to Tyler Bobin, senior brand analyst at real-time ad tracker iSpot.TV.
For example, national TV ad spend for the psoriasis, skin and nail industry jumped a whopping 46% from one year ago.
In fact, toward the end of the year, big names Sanofi and AbbVie duked it out for top spender in TV drug ad spend. Sanofi spent $42.6 million for atopic dermatitis treatment Dupixent ads in October, securing the No. 1 television ad spend by a pharmaceutical company for that month.
Sanofi just barely beat out the previous three-month champion AbbVie, which spent $41.7 million in October on TV ads for Rinvoq (for rheumatoid arthritis), according to data from iSpot.TV.
When and where pharma spent ad dollars
In the first half of 2022, pharma’s spend on television ads was up just slightly, 1%, from the same period one year prior. According to the Standard Media Index, pharma put $5.5 billion into all product ads at the start of 2022.
The spend seemed to even out as money for TV ads for prescription drugs fell 2% and money for over-the-counter drugs rose 2%.
The increase in pharma ad spend was also attributed to commercials airing during big television programming events such as the Olympics ($165 million) and NFL broadcasts ($133 million) in addition to the industry’s usual strong emphasis on advertisements during news shows.
For example, in just the first month of NFL play this year, iSpot.tv reported that almost 30% of Comirnaty TV ad impressions appeared during NFL games, and more than 63% of national TV ad spend for the brand was allocated toward the NFL in general.
“On the NFL end, Comirnaty is also pretty visible, as one of the 30 most-seen advertisers over the first two weeks of the regular season,” an analyst from iSpot told Fierce Pharma Marketing back in September. “It’s by far the most-seen pharma spot during NFL games.”
Other prescription medicine brands that appeared during NFL games included Bristol Myers Squibb’s cancer drug Opdivo and its autoimmune medication Zeposia along with AstraZeneca’s diabetes drug Farxiga.
Looking ahead
Toward the end of the year, pharma TV ad spend was around $354 million a month across all prescription brands. Fall spend was higher than in the summer, which is typical for most industries as prime-time programming and the NFL return.
“While TV advertising overall will have its challenges next year, pharma hasn’t shown signs of slowing down in recent years, and that momentum is likely to continue in 2023,” Bobin said. “And if brands in other industries opt to scale back TV ads, pharma could fill that void—especially without Olympics programming next year.”
Bobin believes TV ads will continue to have a strong presence in pharma advertising even as funds put toward digital continue to grow. Therefore, expect similar or slightly more pharma TV ad spend in 2023.
Several factors will play into which drugs pharma promotes on TV in the coming months. According to Bobin, as more sports become open to pharma, the opportunities to advertise drugs during live sports shows will grow as well. In fact, Bobin points out that prescription drug national TV ad spend jumped 108% year over year during sports programs (both live events and studio shows) in 2022.
Another factor in the coming year will be how the big-name pharma brands decide to rank their priorities. For example, there could be a new drug on the market or approval for a new use case for an existing prescription.
“If something is a priority for pharma, they’ve shown they’ll spend the money on TV,” Bobin added.
The biggest wild card going into 2023, which is beyond the industry’s control, is a possible recession, according to Bobin.
“With consumers already tightening budgets, it could lead to increased use of price-related language in spots, and/or fewer spots during more expensive programming,” he said. “As Gen Z becomes a larger share of the buying public as well, it’ll be interesting to see if pharma adjusts TV ad creative to mimic digital marketing, as other industries have in recent years.”