Roche has claimed the top spot in a ranking of the online presence of drugmakers, climbing two spots on the strength of its provision of local websites and industry-leading use of LinkedIn.
The analysis comes from Worldcom Public Relations Group, a global partnership of independent public relations firms. Worldcom looked at websites, blogs and social media channels run by the top 25 pharma companies in 27 countries for the report.
This year, the top five reads Roche, Pfizer, Novartis, Bayer and AbbVie. The first four companies on that list occupied some of the top spots last year, albeit in a different order. AbbVie was the only new entrant. Sanofi, which topped the chart in 2023, was the only drugmaker to slip out of the top five. And, like last year, Worldcom again said the industry is failing to capitalize on opportunities for localized content.
The PR partnership found all 25 drugmakers had a global website, but none had local websites for all 27 countries. Roche and Pfizer led the way with sites in 24 of the 27 countries. Similarly, while all but two of the pharma companies reported having a global blog, Worldcom said local blogs are hard to find. Around one-quarter of country operations have blogs.
The analysis also looked at shifts in social media usage. X, formerly Twitter, was the big loser. In 2018, Worldcom found 32% of companies were using the channel. The figure fell to 9% in the latest analysis, sliding further from the slump to 12% Worldcom saw in its previous report.
Facebook’s figures are a mirror image of X’s decline, with the percentage of companies with “sustained activity” on the platform rising from 9% to 12% between the two most recent reports. All 25 companies have global accounts on LinkedIn, but Worldcom put Novartis and Roche at the top of the tree.
Use of other channels is rarer. Worldcom found a handful of companies have local YouTube accounts and reported similarly scant use of Instagram. TikTok use went from zero in 2023 to 1% in the latest report, leading Worldcom to say pharma’s absence from the channel “arguably represents a missed opportunity to engage and build trust on this platform with a larger and more diverse demographic as the audience.”