• Ad Age, Monday, August 21, 2006 11:58 AM

A new report says pharmaceutical companies, more in tune with the power of the Internet than marketers in other categories, will increase online spending by about 25 percentthis year, to $780 million. The report, from eMarketer, says that online spending will rise to $1.3 billion by 2008. The gain is being attributed to marketers' shift from consumer mass marketing to more targeted opportunities online and by federal regulatory crackdowns on drug ads. Plus, 31.6 million Americans now turn to the Web first for health-care information. "The result is a shift in focus from direct-to-consumer to direct-to-patient, from mass marketing to relationship marketing," says Lisa Phillips, senior analyst at eMarketer and author of the report. "So instead of advertising particular medications, marketers are focusing more on providing information and a place for communities to gather on websites geared to specific conditions and questions about treatment."

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