Pharma has a lower level of trust in digital media

According to the study, Health Portal Audit 2013 carried out by Szinapszis Ltd. the traffic of health websites shows a more dynamic increase than the average. The 8 websites observed generate around 6.7 million visits monthly, while visitors download more than 12.4 million health-related pages in total.

 

A shockingly large proportion of the public, around 89% looks for information online related to their diagnosed conditions either before or after visiting their physician. In addition to online information influencing the patient’s decision about visiting their doctor, sharing therapy-related recommendations is significant as well. Three-quarter of the respondents said that information found online helps them when it comes to different treatment options: 62% of respondents use the internet to decide between pharmacotherapy and alternative treatments.

 

Internet users visit the bigger health portals around 6 million times every month. 78% of the respondents look for information related to different conditions and treatments, while 70% of them look for content about lifestyle and ways to stay healthy. More than half of internet users, precisely 64% go online to gather information about medications (side effects, mechanism of action, dosage).

 

The contrast between trends of looking for health-related information online and the practice of advertising is striking. When considering online display ad spending alone there is no pharmaceutical company among the top 10 biggest advertisers, despite the fact that Bayer Hungaria, Sanofi-Aventis and TEVA Hungary all made the list of top 10 advertisers in terms of total spending on all adversitements according to findings of Kantar Media for the period between January and August.

 

The Szinapszis Health Portals Audit 2013 study is available for free after registration.