Quantifying Pharma’s Online Promotional Shift

Interesting data cited by CMI, SDI and other sources around how much pharma is spending to reach physicians on the web across e-detailing, online meetings and web-based promotions.  It is unclear if this data includes web-site development (ie. building pharma’s physician portals).

Quantifying pharma’s online promotional shift – Medical Marketing and Media.

Still at a tiny portion of overall budgets, spending on reaching physicians on the web is increasing.

“SDI says its ePromotion Audit, which tracks eDetails, online meetings and other web-based promotional activities for physicians, showed an increase of nearly 7% in industry spending on ePromotion, from $491 million in 2008 to $523 million in 2009. In terms of overall share, ePromotion commands 2.5% of total promotion (details, events, DTC, journals and ePromotion), vs. 2.4% in 2008.”

This 2.5% is roughly in line with the “overall” 2.6% pharma spend (MD’s and consumers combined) that TNS data reports presented in Ad Age and as graphed here by John Mack.