A new study estimated that 26.3 million U.S. adults actively seek pharmaceutical information on the Internet, up from 11.6 million a year and a half ago.
While these consumers recall television and print advertising of pharmaceuticals, more than three-quarters remembered seeing ads for medical drugs online, according to Manhattan Research LLC. This reflects the multichannel nature of the online pharmaceutical end user, the New York healthcare marketing and services company said.
The trends were pulled from Manhattan Research's ePharma Consumer v2.0 data set analyzing consumers who seek medical information online. The data was collected in December and January by polling online 3,000 U.S. adults.
The report said nearly half of these consumers reported visiting the Internet after seeing an ad for prescription drugs in offline media like TV or magazines. They visited the Internet immediately after viewing the offline ad.
Sites most popular with these consumers are for products like Allegra, Clarinex, Celebrex, Nexium's purplepill.com, Zoloft, Zocor, Glucophage, Advair, Imitrex, Ambien, Flonase, Paxil, Lipitor, Prevacid, Viagra and Zyrtec.
