In February of 2004 the FDA published restructured DTC guidelines for prescription drug advertisements that significantly reduced the scope of the onerous ‘brief summary’ print requirements. In doing so the FDA sent a clear message that direct to consumer advertising will remain a viable advertising option well into the future.

In the wake of the February announcement there has been an increased interest in the pharmaceutical marketing community in novel strategies for direct to consumer advertising of prescription drugs. Among these new strategies, Internet DTC is attracting significant interest and the online marketing space is projected to become the fastest growing segment of pharma marketing budgets in 2004-2005.

This rosy outlook for online direct to consumer drug advertising is directly related to the benefits it offers over conventional print and broadcast channels. Chief among these is reach - a 2003 Pew Internet study reports that fully 80% of U.S. Internet users actively search for healthcare information online. This represents a large, pre-qualified target audience, many of which cannot be reached effectively though broadcast or print. Online DTC also offers a number of functional benefits such as the ability to custom-tailor advertising messages, direct CRM tie-ins, and the opportunity to perform real-time ROI tracking on online advertising campaigns. Taken together, these qualities make effective utilization of the online pharmaceutical marketing space essential to any competitive pharmaceutical DTC marketing campaign.