• Wall Street Journal, Thursday, April 16, 2009 10:45 AM

Fewer new-drug introductions and heightened congressional scrutiny of drug marketing led to an 8% drop in consumer advertising of prescription drugs in 2008, Keith J. Winstein and Suzanne Vranica report. Total spending was $4.4 billion, according to market researcher IMS Health.

Spending peaked at $4.8 billion in 2007, up from less than $1 billion in 1997, when the Food and Drug Administration relaxed restrictions on marketing directly to consumers. In the U.S., ads aimed at consumers typically account for only about 40% of the total marketing budget for prescription drugs, according to the pharmaceutical industry, with the rest directed at doctors.

Print advertising for drugs fell 18%; TV advertising dropped 4%. Those declines were larger than the overall decline in ad spending last year, which Nielsen put at 2.6%. Drug advertising also fell faster than overall pharmaceutical marketing, IMS says.

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