Astel­las in­tro­duces menopause drug to NFL au­di­ence: Astel­las spent more mon­ey ad­ver­tis­ing its menopause drug Veozah than any oth­er new brand on reg­u­lar NFL broad­casts in the 2023-2024 sea­son so far, ac­cord­ing to da­ta from re­al-time TV ad track­er iS­pot.tv.

Even as the ad industry laments a general downturn in traditional TV media, pharma marketers are wrapping up a blockbuster year. Pharma companies plunked down $4.37 billion, an increase of 8.8% over 2022, on national TV commercials through mid-December, according to real-time ad tracker iSpot.tv.

The competition is also apparent in TV commercial airings, with more than $225 million spent by drugmakers so far this year, according to iSpot.tv tracking data in the psoriasis and shingles category. Of the total, $217 million went to branded ads, with the remaining more than $8 million spent on unbranded ads, attributed to the current AbbVie campaign.

New pharma brands are tapping into old tried-and-true pharma ad strategies and investing big in TV advertising, according to the latest tracking report from iSpot.tv.

Up-and-coming brands from AbbVie, Bristol Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly got a lot of network TV airtime in the first half of 2023. Commercials for Skyrizi for two indications, Sotyktu and Mounjaro ranked in the top 10 for most-viewed, first-time TV campaigns in realtime ad tracker iSpot.tv’s first-half report.

​​Pfizer debuted its first brand campaign for its Covid-19 treatment Paxlovid and mentioned in an Endpoints News Grammy Awards story yesterday, but it’s worth noting again. Until now, Pfizer has been encouraging people to go to a healthcare provider quickly — to the tune of more than $108 million in NFL TV ad placements alone, according to real-time TV ad tracker iSpot.tv.

National Football League games, and big viewing audiences, are typically popular with drugmakers looking to advertise product brands. However, this year, Pfizer’s broader Covid vaccine encouragement and treatment awareness advertising led the pharma charge by a wide margin during both NFL regular season and postseason national broadcasts, according to real-time TV ad tracker iSpot.tv.

Pfizer spent almost $90 million during the regular season and another $18 million during the playoffs ahead of all pharma companies and brands, iSpot reported in a tabulation for Endpoints News.

It’s not a big secret, but pharma advertisers love TV news programming. As midterm elections and political news trend on morning and evening live news shows, pharma TV ads are seeing a correlating uptick, according to the latest data from TV ad tracker iSpot.tv.

And what a surge it was. iSpot ran the numbers for Endpoints News and found a massive jump in advertising that mentioned or directly addressed Covid-19. In the first quarter of 2020, Covid-related ads accounted for just $106 million in TV ads pending — remember Covid-19 was just beginning then and only labeled a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11.

However, that rocketed to a whopping $2.13 billion for the next three months. Covid-related advertising tallied another $1.2 billion in the third quarter and $1.62 billion for the last three months of 2020.

If pharma advertising had a fantasy football league, Pfizer would be crushing the competition. A dive into the National Football League’s TV commercial buys across early season games by iSpot shows a hefty lead with its Covid-19 Comirnaty vaccine ads.

More than 175 million impressions with $9.5 million in media spending put Pfizer in the top spot with a 65% share of voice across NFL pharma spending, according to the real-time TV ad tracker. In a distant second place is Bristol Myers Squibb’s Opdivo with 44 million impressions, $5.2 million in spending and a 16% share, followed by BMS’ Zeposia with 31 million impressions, $3.3 million in media buys and an 11% share.