MediaRadar, a leading marketing intelligence platform that tracks ad spending across industries, released data indicating that the U.S. pharmaceutical industry invested approximately $6.4 billion in television advertising in 2024. This figure represents a significant portion of the sector's overall marketing budget, underscoring TV's enduring role as a primary channel for direct-to-consumer (DTC) prescription drug promotion.
The report highlights pharma's dominance in TV ad spend, ranking it among the top-spending industries, just behind consumer packaged goods and entertainment.
This spending fueled ubiquitous ads for treatments like psoriasis drugs (e.g., AbbVie's Skyrizi and Rinvoq), which alone accounted for a large share of the total, as well as emerging categories like weight-loss medications (e.g., Novo Nordisk's Wegovy).
Key insights from MediaRadar's analysis include:
- Total Pharma Ad Spend: The broader pharmaceutical sector allocated over $10.1 billion to all forms of DTC advertising in 2024, with TV comprising about 63% ($6.4 billion). This marked a roughly 2% year-over-year increase, driven by blockbuster drugs and heightened competition in areas like immunology and oncology.
- Top Spenders and Brands: AbbVie led with heavy promotion of Skyrizi (over $1 billion across all media), followed by Eli Lilly (Mounjaro for diabetes/weight loss) and Pfizer (various brands). The top 10 drugs were responsible for about one-third of all pharma ad expenditures.
- TV's Primetime Dominance: Pharma ads saturated primetime slots, evening news, and sports programming, airing over 5 million times. This contributed to pharma accounting for nearly 25% of evening news ad minutes in the first half of 2024, according to complementary data from MediaRadar.
- Digital Shift: While TV remains king, digital ad spend surged 14.2% to $19.45 billion (88% of healthcare's total digital outlay), signaling a diversification strategy amid cord-cutting trends.
The report also warns that pharmaceutical companies may significantly reduce TV ad spending if forthcoming regulatory changes mandate the full disclosure of all side effects in advertisements, potentially disrupting this lucrative revenue stream for broadcasters.
This concern stems from a presidential memorandum signed by President Donald Trump on September 9, 2025, directing the FDA and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to enforce stricter DTC ad rules and close a long-standing loophole.
Officials cited examples like Super Bowl spots for weight-loss drugs omitting risks entirely. The order also extends oversight to social media, where influencers often promote drugs without balanced info.
Listing every side effect (from prescribing information) could balloon ads to 2-4 minutes, unfeasible for standard TV slots. Media executives note this would make spots "unworkably long," forcing pharma to either produce fewer ads or shift to longer formats like infomercials, which are less effective and more expensive.