Does the incoming Trump administration and RFK Jr.’s potential appointment as the head of Health and Human Services (HHS) spell the end of TV drug ads?
Probably not, argues Josh Walsh, CEO and co-founder of BranchLab, a data science firm for health care advertisers, and this week’s guest on The Big Story.
Efforts to crack down on direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals have historically run into constitutional challenges, Walsh argues, mainly because advertisers, like anyone, have the right to free speech.
However, Walsh concedes that the increasing politicization of the US Supreme Court makes it less certain that it will honor legal precedent – especially since the court has already overturned another health care-related precedent, namely Roe v. Wade.
But he’s still putting the odds of a complete ban on TV advertising happening within the next four years at “one to two percent.”
That’s not to say other aspects of targeted health care advertising won’t be under continued scrutiny by the Trump administration. The FTC under Biden has been aggressive in enforcing health data privacy protections and overseeing the use of location tracking by advertisers, which could continue, even under new leadership.
Plus, there’s always the chance that strict state protections governing the use of health data by marketers – like Washington’s My Health My Data Act – get rolled up to the federal level.
Meanwhile, the FDA, which falls under HHS authority, could take steps to restrict certain aspects of pharmaceutical advertising without calling for a full ban. For example, last week the FDA released new guidelines for how pharma brands must disclose side effects in TV and radio ads.
But those guidelines were in the works for 15 years – illustrating how slowly the gears of the federal government turn.
Doing the wave
Then, for those of us who’ve had enough political discussion for one lifetime, the AdExchanger team breaks down Forrester’s latest SSP wave report – the first since 2014 – which lays out its picks for the top 10 SSPs on the market.
Google was by far the biggest loser in Forrester’s estimation, dropping from an SSP category leader a decade ago to a mere challenger today. But what did Forrester have to say about the other SSPs it believes are leading the market? And why should anyone trust Forrester’s reports, given that its evaluations go way more in-depth with companies that choose to participate in the process?
Tune in to find out!
