Facebook Has a Prescription: More Pharmaceutical Ads (washingtonpost.com) 49
An anonymous reader shares a report: After years of avoiding social media, drug companies are growing bolder about advertising on Facebook and other social networks, according to interviews with advertising executives, marketers, health-care privacy researchers and patient advocates. That is exposing loopholes around the way data can be used to show consumers relevant ads about their personal health, even as both social networks and pharmaceutical manufacturers disavow targeting ads to people based on their medical conditions. Ads promoting prescription drugs are popping up on Facebook for depression, HIV and cancer. Spending on Facebook mobile ads alone by pharmaceutical and health-care brands reached nearly a billion dollars in 2019, nearly tripling over two years, according to Pathmatics, an advertising analytics company. Facebook offers tools to help drug companies stay compliant with rules about disclosing safety information or reporting side effects.
But seeing an ad for a drug designed to treat a person's particular health condition in the relatively intimate setting of a social media feed -- amid pictures of friends and links to news articles -- can feel more intrusive than elsewhere online. The same opaque Facebook systems that help place an ad for a political campaign or a new shoe in a user's feed also can be used by pharmaceutical companies, allowing them to target consumers who match certain characteristics or had visited a particular website in the past. The ability of drug companies to reach people likely to have specific health conditions -- a far cry from a magazine or TV ad -- underscores how the nation's health privacy law, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), has not kept up with the times. HIPAA, which safeguards personal health records, typically does not cover drug companies or social media networks.
But seeing an ad for a drug designed to treat a person's particular health condition in the relatively intimate setting of a social media feed -- amid pictures of friends and links to news articles -- can feel more intrusive than elsewhere online. The same opaque Facebook systems that help place an ad for a political campaign or a new shoe in a user's feed also can be used by pharmaceutical companies, allowing them to target consumers who match certain characteristics or had visited a particular website in the past. The ability of drug companies to reach people likely to have specific health conditions -- a far cry from a magazine or TV ad -- underscores how the nation's health privacy law, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), has not kept up with the times. HIPAA, which safeguards personal health records, typically does not cover drug companies or social media networks.
Normal (Score:4, Insightful)
The youth fled it in droves now it's meemaw and peepaw who are there, and they need arthritis medicines and the blue pills.
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The youth fled it in droves now it's meemaw and peepaw who are there, and they need arthritis medicines and the blue pills.
I think the youth demographic will be an emerging market to try and peddle pills to, they just have to figure out what the cool kids are taking.
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Adderall it is then, although I believe the blue pill is being abused even by the youngins for some reason.
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The youth fled it in droves now it's meemaw and peepaw who are there, and they need arthritis medicines and the blue pills.
I think the youth demographic will be an emerging market to try and peddle pills to, they just have to figure out what the cool kids are taking.
The cool kids are overdosing on TikTok memes. An an uncool, unkid, I also partake. They're nowhere near as dank as I'm used to.
Just what I always dreamed of! (Score:2)
Just what I always dreamed of: MORE ADS!
Yippee, what a time to be alive.
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Not to mention you need a doctor's prescription to get these drugs. That these are even marketed with ads is ridiculous
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Not to mention you need a doctor's prescription to get these drugs. That these are even marketed with ads is ridiculous
They do what they're designed to to -- get people to shop for a doctor that will give then the medication they want. This is why prescription drug advertising shouldn't be allowed.
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outside of the usa drug companies are not able sel (Score:5, Insightful)
outside of the usa drug companies are not able sell with ad's like that.
But in the usa we get them all the time and pay the most for drugs.
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outside of the usa drug companies are not able sell with ad's like that.
They are not able to sell to the general public but anyone who can write prescriptions is fair game. My dad was a GP in the UK and used to get tons of stuff from drug companies with logos for their latest drug plastered all over it. They even used to send audio tapes every month which was great because I never had to buy blank audiotapes as a teenager and I had loads of free folders, notepaper and pens.
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Oh joy (Score:2)
YouTube has used their data collection on me to determine I'm an old fart and keeps showing me ads related to my age and very little based upon what I watch. Ok, fine, I am an old fart, but that doesn't mean I want to see ads for nursing home care, great heart hospitals, diabetes care, funeral expenses and a cornucopia of drug ads. I'm not THAT old.
(yeah I could browse without an account but it's inconvenient as I subscribe to some channels and like having the history to look something up. I do use a fak
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I make a habit of giving false information on the Internet. Facebook has lately decided I must be into women's clothing. So now all the ads are pictures of pretty women wearing dresses and bikinis. I guess in a way Facebook is correct, although I don't think in quite the way the advertisers hope for. Anyway, it's much more pleasant than the scam herbal supplements and creatine ads that used to show up.
Boner pills will save Facebook (Score:4, Funny)
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I've got a fever... (Score:4, Funny)
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Bernie's socialism is not my major objection to this guy. It's that he's an anti-scientific lunkhead masquerading as a purveyor of bold new ideas. The economics of our healthcare system badly needs bold reforms, but that's not what we're going to get from a gloomy old No Nukes GMO-labeling fud.
Bernie Sanders is an old man yelling at the Cloud.
Unstated Facebook business model (Score:3)
1. Create depression
2. Charge advertisers of pills to fix depression
3. (No ???)
4. Profit!
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3. (No ???)
HERESY!
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I'm Protestant. That never works.
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How is this still legal? (Score:3)
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I personally have never had a doctor who would just prescribe me whatever I asked for. I don't really understand how the ads actually generate much revenue. It feels more like the kind of return of email spammers where they just need one person to respond to justify the costs, except these things cost so much more.
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Not only that, but there are plenty of people that can't address current health issues while they're minor because they're still paying for treatment for their previous health issues. Once THOSE issues are taken care of and they can afford treatment for the newer batch, they will have gotten more serious and difficult (i.e. expensive) to treat.
This is why I live with rotator cuff problems for now instead of having them fixed.
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Drug advertising is already widespread on Facebook (Score:2)
Make no mistake: the pharma ads have been there for a while. They're just not always self-identified as pharma ads. Last month I ran across this "slideshow of famous people with schizophrenia" in my feed: https://www.webmd.com/schizoph... [webmd.com]
The slideshow is essentially a stealth ad for psych medications. It's meant to "raise awareness" of "schizophrenia", in the hopes that more people will seek out drug treatment for themselves or their families. Follow the list to the end, and you will see a page with the
Direct to consumer medication ads can be illegal (Score:2)
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Oh, considering that most people these days are using FB on a gadget, they know *exactly* where you are 24/7.
ask a psychoanalyst if Facebook is right for you (Score:2)
side effects include stress, psychosis, laughing in serious meetings, suicide, and voting for idiots based on poison memes.
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This should eventually be self-correcting (Score:2)
Enough ads that make the viewers uneasy should eventually show up in marketing analytics, and the drug manufacturers will stop doing counter-productive advertising.
Assuming ad analytics (and marketing analytics in general) actually work...
Do this. (Score:2)
Wait, what? (Score:2)
Fun game... comment with the cost of the drug (Score:2)
If the ad allows comments, comment with the annual retail cost of the drug. Drug manufactures often forget and leave out this important information in their ads.
Makes Perfect Sense (Score:2)
This makes absolute perfect sense as this is where one can find all the defectives and neurotics that will click on ads and buy advertized products.
Who exactly are they advertising to? (Score:1)
I don't understand... 99.9 percent of people aren't doctors. Are they hoping Karen from accounting reads some trade marked name, goes to her doctor, and says "i have to have Myboxisore or Myboobsaresmallin because facebook says so" ?
Oh boy - Can't wait (Score:2)
Juridictional leaks (Score:2)
Facebook will have to be quite careful about not leaking those ads into other jurisdictions, there are many countries where pharmaceutical ads are highly regulated or even banned (particularly for prescription drugs).
It would be unfortunate if due to an IP geolocation error or bad cookies, Facebook presented an ad for a controlled substance somewhere they weren't allowed to, and were then subjected to substantial fines.
How about cutting the cost of drugs... (Score:2)
By returning the law that was tossed out in '97, that made it ILLEGAL for drug companies to advertise prescription-only drugs to everybody other than doctors.
Really? You know better than your doctor that you should take a green/lemon/puce pill for somethingorother?