The drug industry invested over $4.3 billion dollars in the last year for advertisement. Online drug advertising made up only 3% of this market. This is mainly due to regulations imposed by the Food and Drug Administration that curtails the ads that can be posted on the internet.

Google, Yahoo! and other web companies have urged the FDA to modify the current regulations that place such a stranglehold on online advertising. Major revenue for these companies comes through advertising. Not being able to tap into the enormous drug advertising market has led them to move the FDA to modify its regulations.

Yahoo! Vice President David Zinman said “We need to get some adjustment to the way the medium is used because it’s very different from print and broadcast — that’s the main challenge”.

Companies that do advertise their drugs do so indirectly. They advertise anonymously for certain medical conditions. Links shown are connected to the drug website. This indirect form of advertising makes it hard for the consumer to find what they are looking for.

Current FDA regulations require drug advertisements to have all documented side effects and benefits made known to the consumer. Due to the differences between television or print and the internet, the monitoring of ads is not straight forward. The regulations placed by the FDA aren’t without reason either. The motivation behind the regulations is the safety of the consumer. Proper information on the side-effects and risks of a drug are rights of the consumer.

Due to the vast nature of the internet, monitoring drug advertising by the FDA is a difficult process and an expensive one. The FDA regulates products that make up one quarter of the US economy. Adding monitoring of web advertising will be an incredible burden on the already overburdened institution. If a change in regulation will be required, then the expenses that will be incurred for the additional monitoring should be borne by the new industry user fees. Drug industries already pay millions to fund the review of new drugs by the FDA.

The modifications to the present regulation are not likely to be released until 2011. This extended timeline for the modifications are what are of concern to Google and Yahoo! Since media technology is growing tremendously over short periods of time, this lengthy wait could cause a lagging effect. The regulations would never be able to keep up and the industry as a result would never reach full potential.

A study by American Journal of Public Health offers certain guidelines. To form a balanced package, the ads need to be designed to satisfy the following goals:

• Ads should provide information on the prevalence of the conditions, who is at risk and the obvious symptoms that are known. If there are unobvious symptoms, then provide information on what the risk of contracting the condition is.
• Use quantitative information to describe the drug’s potential benefits to give the user a realistic idea of the drug based on facts.
• Use quantitative information to display the risks associated with the drug. This information should not be cloaked by any distractions to the user.

The infrastructure to monitor all ads and verify if they satisfy these conditions is not trivial. The lengthy timeline expected is a result of the complicated nature of this problem. With the pharmaceutical lobby and web companies now asking for quicker changes could prompt an expedited release of new guidelines. We can only wait and watch as it plays out.