Key Findings

Consumer appetite for digital health content is voracious and growing. The number of Americans accessing health information online is up 159% from 2004. Health portals including WebMD, Everyday Health, and About.com attract millions of unique visitors. In addition, traffic to branded pharmaceutical sites increased 82% last year, suggesting brands have a legitimate role in the online conversation. Disparity in the quality of the digital content produced by pharmaceutical brands leads discriminating consumers to vote with their browsers.

Despite hearings in November 2009, the FDA has remained silent about social media marketing regulation, restraining movement to platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Although 80% of parent companies are starting to dip their toes into social media, only 19% of pharmaceutical brands maintain a presence on at least one site. Parent company efforts lack sophistication, and as a result, have attracted few followers. Bright spots include Johnson & Johnson’s YouTube channel, viewed more than 1.6 million times, and Merck’s Gardasil human papillomavirus (HPV) awareness Facebook page, with more than 100,000 fans.

As one would expect, brands that market to younger consumers have higher Digital IQs. In an attempt to reach a generation raised on Google and Facebook, brand marketers in categories such as Birth Control, HPV and Psychiatry have worked to understand how to design informative and interactive web sites, incorporate community content and technology, attract users to branded sites, and test social media. Yet, this is a case of not seeing the forest from the trees as the vast majority of prescription drugs are consumed by older adults who are increasingly online— in the five-year period from 2004 to 2009 Internet usage increased by 55% to 17.5 million users for seniors.