Pharma companies increase ad spending on linear TV despite declining viewership on the platform

The trend: Pharma companies are increasing their advertising presence on linear TV, according to a recent report from iSpot.tv. The report analyzed pharma ads on linear TV from January through August of this year.

The topline findings on pharma’s traditional TV ad spending:

• Pharma advertisers poured around $3.4 billion in linear TV during the first eight months of 2024. That’s an 8.1% YoY increase.
• Drug ads generated 54.2 billion household TV ad impressions, a 4.2% YoY increase.

Top TV programs for Rx ads: Nearly half (48%) of household TV ad impressions for prescription drug brands were split between ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, ION, MSNBC, and NBC.

Drug ads were most prevalent on cable news, re-runs of popular dramas and game shows, and special event programming.

• ABC World News Tonight held the largest share of Rx brand TV ad impressions. It was followed by other news shows such as Good Morning America and NBC Nightly News.
• NCIS, The Price is Right, and Law & Order: SVU each ranked in the top 10.
• Drug ads during the 2024 Summer Olympics had widespread reach in terms of impressions, particularly considering the event only lasted a little over two weeks.

TV is important for targeting older consumers: US adults are spending less time with linear TV each year, per our estimates. However, older patients are pharma’s top priority—and they’re the folks most likely to consume traditional media.

We forecast that US consumers ages 65+ spend on average over 5 hours per day with linear TV, while those in the 55 to 64 age group watch about 4 hours a day. Comparatively, consumers under 44 years old watch less than 2 hours of TV per day, with most Gen Zers not even reaching the 1-hour mark.

The 65+ demographic is extremely lucrative to pharma brands.

• Nearly 9 in 10 (88.6%) US adults ages 65+ took a prescription medication in the past year, per the CDC. About one-third take five or more regularly.

Key stat: Healthcare and pharma marketers lean heavier on traditional media than any other singular sector EMARKETER measured in our recent ad spending benchmarks per industry.

• Healthcare and pharma marketers will allocate over one-quarter (27.8%) of total media ad budgets to conventional channels (e.g., linear TV, radio, print) this year.

The final word: Linear TV isn’t the only television format top-of-mind for pharma advertisers.

Pharma brands are also devoting resources to connected TV (CTV), which lets marketers integrate longer-form video content into platforms where consumers are increasingly spending more time. CTV/streaming was ranked as the No. 2 most important consumer trend that healthcare and pharma marketers are monitoring in H2 2024, per a recent Mediaocean report. It ranked only behind genAI.

Go deeper with our US Healthcare and Pharma Ad Spending 2024 report.

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