Pfizer ($PFE) owned TV ad spending for 2015 among pharma brands. It took 5 spots on the top 10 list for the year, including Nos. 1 and 2, according to iSpot.tv estimated spending tallied for FiercePharmaMarketing.
Seizure and pain drug Lyrica came in first with $116.2 million spent in 2015, while Pfizer's pneumococcal pneumonia vaccine Prevnar 13 came in at No. 2 with $101.7 million.
The three other Pfizer drugs on the list were anticoagulant Eliquis (No. 5), arthritis fighter Xeljanz (No. 6) and smoking cessation drug Chantix (No. 9), spending $96.7 million, $85.3 million, and $68.5 million respectively, according to iSpot.tv data.
Other Big Pharmas divvied up the remaining spots. Johnson & Johnson's ($JNJ) diabetes drug Invokana was No. 3 at $101.3 million, while AbbVie's ($ABBV) Humira was No. 4. One unfortunate note at No. 10 was Sanofi's ($SNY) epinephrine product Auvi-Q, which spent $54.2 million in TV advertising, only to have to pull all its injectors on worries that they might be delivering incorrect dosages.
It's worth noting that these year-end totals only account for TV ad spending. TV tends to be a key media component in many branded drug campaign strategies, especially the blockbusters and wannabes, but print, digital and other media still account for a substantial part of budgets.
iSpot.tv, which tracks and measures TV advertising in real-time, also identified several pharma and healthcare TV spend trends in 2015. Both the diabetes and arthritis/osteoporosis categories, for instance, saw budget increases, with diabetes drugs in particular ramping up TV ad spending.
Thanks at least in part to the new SGLT2 inhibitor class of drugs, diabetes category ad spending rose to $468 million in 2015--an increase of 141%--from $194 million in 2014. In 2015, 11 different diabetes brands ran 31 different commercials more than 66,000 times on U.S. national television, while in 2014 just 7 brands ran 20 ads about 29,000 times, iSpot analysts noted.
In the arthritis and osteoporosis category--where iSpot.tv includes several OTC medications--spending was up 10% year over year for a total of $524 million in 2015. Those ads came from 38 brands with 144 different commercials running more than 205,000 times on U.S. national television, iSpot reported.
The top 10 list by estimated TV media spending for 2015 follows:
1. Pfizer's Lyrica: $116.2 million
2. Pfizer's Prevnar 13: $101.7
3. Johnson & Johnson's Invokana: $101.3 million
4. AbbVie's Humira: $98.6 million
5. Pfizer's Eliquis: $96.7 million
6. Pfizer's Xeljanz: $85.3 million
7. AstraZeneca's Farxiga: $78.4 million
8. Bayer's Xarelto: $75.4 million
9. Pfizer's Chantix: $68.5 million
10. Sanofi's Auvi-Q: $54.2 million
- watch the ads at iSpot.tv
Special Report : The top 10 most-advertised prescription drug brands - Lyrica - Eliquis - Humira - Xeljanz - Chantix