{"id":32547,"date":"2025-06-25T13:32:31","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T13:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=32547"},"modified":"2025-06-25T13:32:31","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T13:32:31","slug":"drug-ad-ban-could-leave-us-pharma-with-a-bad-case-of-withdrawal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=32547","title":{"rendered":"Drug ad ban could leave US pharma with a bad case of withdrawal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> \n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description o3-type-body-base\"><span>Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=1f8fb1fe-585f-4437-94c5-64ea61f4851f\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>When it comes to American exceptionalism, it\u2019s hard to beat prescription drug TV ads. Viewers in the US are bombarded with appeals from makers of medications treating everything from arthritis to psoriasis \u2014 and more recently weight loss. The commercials \u2014 which inevitably feature scenes of smiling people living life to the full while a narrator rattles off a list of possible side-effects \u2014 are ubiquitous and irksome.\u00a0Outside of the US, only New Zealand allows such things.<\/p>\n<p>Change may be coming. The White House is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2025-06-17\/rfk-jr-plans-crackdown-on-pharma-ads-in-threat-to-10-billion-market?sref=9FyWAn80\" data-trackable=\"link\">reportedly<\/a> considering measures to limit pharma companies\u2019 ability to conduct so-called direct-to-consumer advertising. Senators introduced <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sanders.senate.gov\/press-releases\/news-sanders-king-introduce-bill-to-ban-prescription-drug-ads\/\" data-trackable=\"link\">a bill this month<\/a> that would ban the practice altogether, arguing drug ads drive up healthcare costs by steering patients towards more expensive drugs when equally effective cheaper generics are available. <\/p>\n<p>For a hint of how much drugmakers could lose from this move, look at how much they spend. The pharmaceutical industry deployed over $5bn on national TV ads last year, according to ad measurement firm iSpot. AbbVie, the biggest spender, stumped up $635mn on traditional TV ads to promote Skyrizi and Rinvoq. US sales of the two blockbuster autoimmune drugs generated about a quarter of the company\u2019s revenue last year. Eli Lilly is another major ad buyer. It spent over half a billion dollars last year on TV ads for its diabetes and weight loss treatments.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>There are two risks for these companies. One is that patients and physicians opt for alternative drugs. There are ways to mitigate that, though, such as marketing to the doctors themselves. A bigger concern might be that patients, unmolested by drug ads promising a happier, healthier life, may not take their complaints to a doctor in the first place. Again, there\u2019s a workaround: \u201cdisease awareness\u201d campaigns, in which drugmakers coax viewers into treatment without naming their products. Or in the absence of a blanket ban, they could just take their drug ads to other channels, such as social media.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"n-content-image n-content-image--full\" data-component=\"image-set\"><picture><source media=\"(min-width: 700px)\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/__origami\/service\/image\/v2\/images\/raw\/ftcms%3Af7eed996-8d5d-42d5-aa11-1a2ba5a93ab1?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=700&amp;dpr=1 1x,https:\/\/www.ft.com\/__origami\/service\/image\/v2\/images\/raw\/ftcms%3Af7eed996-8d5d-42d5-aa11-1a2ba5a93ab1?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=700&amp;dpr=2 2x,https:\/\/www.ft.com\/__origami\/service\/image\/v2\/images\/raw\/ftcms%3Af7eed996-8d5d-42d5-aa11-1a2ba5a93ab1?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=700&amp;dpr=3 3x,https:\/\/www.ft.com\/__origami\/service\/image\/v2\/images\/raw\/ftcms%3Af7eed996-8d5d-42d5-aa11-1a2ba5a93ab1?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=700&amp;dpr=4 4x,https:\/\/www.ft.com\/__origami\/service\/image\/v2\/images\/raw\/ftcms%3Af7eed996-8d5d-42d5-aa11-1a2ba5a93ab1?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=700&amp;dpr=5 5x\" width=\"3500\" height=\"2500\"\/><source media=\"(max-width: 490px)\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/__origami\/service\/image\/v2\/images\/raw\/ftcms%3A53c4c004-e9d2-4dad-9ad4-1a990895fa96?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=490&amp;dpr=1 1x,https:\/\/www.ft.com\/__origami\/service\/image\/v2\/images\/raw\/ftcms%3A53c4c004-e9d2-4dad-9ad4-1a990895fa96?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=490&amp;dpr=2 2x,https:\/\/www.ft.com\/__origami\/service\/image\/v2\/images\/raw\/ftcms%3A53c4c004-e9d2-4dad-9ad4-1a990895fa96?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=490&amp;dpr=3 3x\" width=\"1500\" height=\"2000\"\/><\/picture><\/figure>\n<p>For TV network operators, the prognosis looks glum. Revenue generated from prescription drug commercials has been one of the few bright spots in an otherwise soft advertising market. Spending on pharmaceutical advertising is on the up even as audiences and advertising revenue for non-streamed TV have declined. The pharma industry now accounts for more than 13 per cent of all national TV ad spending, up from less than 10 per cent just three years ago, according to iSpot.<\/p>\n<p>The Big Four networks \u2014 NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox \u2014 collectively took in nearly $2.7bn in drug ad revenues last year. That may not be a lot compared with the $258bn the networks\u2019 respective parent companies generated. But traditional TV has been losing its lustre for years. Banning drug ads would leave these operators with an unpleasant case of cold turkey.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/mailto:pan.yuk@ft.com\" data-trackable=\"link\">pan.yuk@ft.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/1f8fb1fe-585f-4437-94c5-64ea61f4851f\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":32548,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}