Medical news website WebMD has announced that its 2012 revenue will likely be 2% to 8% less than what it posted in 2011. One reason that been cited is the pull back in pharmaceutical advertising. This is an area WebMD will clearly have to bee up: as recently as the beginning of this week, the site appeared to be on the brink of being purchased by Yahoo. Now, the site has said, it will not be considering any sale.
Unfortunately, the landscape has become more perilous even for sites with such a good brand name as WebMD.
The Food and Drug Administration has provided little guidance as to what is acceptable in social media advertising.
Lack of Trust
People seeking healthcare information online–especially sensitive information–are leery about privacy issues when it comes to desktop search, one recent study finds. Instead, they are more likely to turn to their mobile devices. This trend was identified by Healthline mobile search, a consumer health search engine.
It recently published a list of 2011's most-searched health and medical terms that were done on desktop computers and mobile devices. It found significant differences in what consumers search for from the privacy of their mobile devices vs. from PCs.
Pharmaceutical brands also need to work on improving consumer trust in the advertising in general, according to a Harris Poll. Only 18% of poll respondents 18 and up found pharmaceutical advertising most trustworthy compared to ads from four other major US industries. In contrast, 29% of all respondents 18 and up ranked pharmaceutical ads as least trustworthy.
In WebMD's Favor
There are trends in WebMD’s favor. Search engines such as Google and Bing–and WedMD–are the top online sources of health information for US adults, according to results of a Harris Poll.
Almost seven in 10 (69%) respondents indicated they use search engines to find health data online. Closely following search engines as a source of online health information were medical websites such as WebMD.com, used by more than six in 10 (62%) respondents. No other online source of health information had anywhere near the popularity of the two leading sources.
Exposure to online display advertising and branded websites provides a positive lift in awareness and favorability toward pharmaceutical brands, according to a comScore study.
The study found that exposure to online display advertising and branded websites have a positive impact on awareness and favorability among both prospects and patients. For prospects, exposure to a display ad increased both aided and unaided brand awareness by 2.8 and 1.8 percentage points, respectively.
