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.
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.
