Direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of pharmaceutical products is an increasingly used but widely debated practice [1,2]. Electronic DTCA (eDTCA), in particular, is a rapidly growing marketing strategy [3] that was recently declared a “global health challenge” [4]. In particular, the features and affordances of social media (ie, interactive Web platforms where users can connect, collaborate, and exchange user-generated content) add complexity to pharmaceutical drug marketing. For instance, pharmaceutical companies can quickly and cheaply reach a variety of consumers online with multimodal, interactive, promotional activities, and consumers can produce promotional content as well [3]. Despite growing concerns about harmful effects, there is a lack of academic research on eDTCA [5]. Given that approximately 75% of adults online in the United States use social media frequently [6], it is critical to examine how social media are being used for eDTCA [4,5]. This study seeks to further our understanding of eDTCA by examining how pharmaceutical companies use social media to interact with the general public and market their drugs.

In addition to pharmaceutical companies’ official social media accounts, it is important to document what information consumers are exposed to when searching popular social media sites for drug information. Researchers have noted that other consumers’ reviews and testimonials are often quite persuasive [3-5]. The extent to which nonexperts make drug efficacy claims and share personal testimonials on social media currently has not been well documented despite the potential for such information to highly influence viewers. Public health officials are also greatly concerned that social media sites are being used to promote or host illegal pharmacies that directly harm patients [3,7,8]. The presence of drug efficacy claims and illegal pharmacies on social media sites is important to examine because these media have the potential to convey a degree of credibility to content they host [9]. Put differently, people might trust the claims made by illegal pharmacies or nonexperts more when the claims are hosted on popular social media sites than on strange or unknown websites. To better understand the prevalence of these concerns and how severely the public might be affected by drug information on social media, we analyzed the nature of information resulting from searches for the 20 most highly sold drugs in the United States on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

The practice of DTCA is controversial. Proponents suggest DTCA has positive effects, such as generating disease awareness and increasing patient involvement in health decisions, but opponents suggest DTCA promotes misinformation, overemphasizes the benefits of pharmaceutical treatment over the risks, increases inappropriate prescribing, and more [2,10,11]. Due to these concerns, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates the content of DTCA, banning all untruthful or misleading advertisements [2]. Additionally, the FDA requires product claim advertisements, a specific type of DTCA that names the drug and the condition(s) it treats, to present a “fair balance” of the benefits and risks of product use. In print advertisements, pharmaceutical companies must provide a brief summary of all risks associated with product use to meet fair-balance requirements. For broadcast advertisements, a statement of the major risks and information on where to locate complete risk information is required. The 2 other types of DTCA, reminder advertisements and help-seeking advertisements, do not indicate which condition(s) a product treats and thus are not subject to fair-balance rules. Reminder advertisements name the drug and often include information on dosage form or price. Help-seeking advertisements describe a health condition and encourage consumers to discuss the condition and potential treatment options with their doctor.

Online promotional activities, or eDTCA, now occupy an increased share of pharmaceutical companies’ marketing budgets and more companies are marketing through social media [2,3]. Public health researchers have documented the negative effects that can occur from frequent and widespread eDTCA [3,4]. However, it remains unclear how pharmaceutical companies are currently using social media to market their drugs. Prior to changes in Facebook’s commenting policy, many companies had specific social media pages for their products [3,12]. Although most product-specific pages have since been discontinued, pharmaceutical companies still maintain official social media accounts. As such, the first step of this study was to assess the extent to which information akin to the 3 forms of DTCA is present on major pharmaceutical companies’ official social media accounts. We also documented the audience reach of eDTCA and whether companies are adhering to the FDA’s fair-balance guidelines on social media.

In addition to eDTCA shared directly by companies, the interactive nature of social media has raised concerns that consumers might provide inaccurate and dangerous information about drugs on the official social media platforms of pharmaceutical companies [5]. People might be more likely to trust information posted by an outside source, particularly if the source claims to have personal experience with the topic at hand [3-5]. Additionally, pharmaceutical companies can potentially delete or alter negative consumer reviews, leaving only the most flattering portrayals behind [4]. Accordingly, we examined whether pharmaceutical companies provide formal policies that regulate what users can post to their official social media accounts (hereafter user postings/contributions are referred to as “user-generated content”) and the frequency and nature of the posted user-generated content. Specifically, we examine whether users posted personal testimonials about health-related issues, the tone of user-generated comments, and the degree to which companies interacted with consumers.

Although people can get information directly from pharmaceutical companies’ sites, they can also search for information about particular drugs within popular social media sites. In particular, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are 3 of the most common social media platforms [5,6,13,14] that provide search capabilities; in a recent survey, 40% of participants had searched for health information on general social media sites such as these before [13]. The pharmaceutical drug information shared on these sites could have a large impact on their users’ treatment decisions. Specifically, personal testimonials and drug efficacy claims, particularly from people unaffiliated with the pharmaceutical company, can be highly influential [3-5]. What information are people exposed to when they search for pharmaceutical drugs on social media? To address this question, we analyzed the nature of information people are exposed to when searching for the 20 most highly sold drugs in the United States on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Of critical interest to public health researchers is the extent to which illegal pharmacies are allowed to persist online. Illegal pharmacies are sites where consumers can purchase prescription drugs without a prescription and can compromise public safety by providing drugs to people who have not consulted medical officials and/or by providing counterfeit drugs that are ineffective, lead to injury, or cause death [7,8,12,15]. Given these serious implications for public health safety, we assessed the extent to which people are exposed to illegal pharmacies when searching on popular social media sites for commonly purchased pharmaceutical drugs.

In analyzing the results that appear when people search for pharmaceutical drugs on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, we more broadly documented the audience reach of the resulting pages and classified who controls the social media accounts (ie, is the site proprietor the pharmaceutical company or a consumer). We also documented the format and tone of the information posted as well as the nature of the associated user-generated comments.

To summarize, we sought to answer the following research questions:

Two separate teams of 3 coders each practiced extensively to clarify definitions and coding decisions. Each coder averaged a training time of approximately 30 hours. Each team coded 10% of their respective samples for reliability testing and intercoder reliability was established for all reported variables (Krippendorff’s α>.70). For the company-specific analysis, Krippendorff’s alpha scores ranged from .73 to 1.00. For the drug-specific analysis, scores ranged from .81 to 1.00.

Of the 800 Facebook pages, tweets, and YouTube videos sampled from social media searches for pharmaceutical drugs, 86.9% (695/800) were actually about the searched-for drug. The following analyses included this portion of the sample.

The results of this study directly address critical concerns raised by researchers and public health officials about the marketing of pharmaceutical drugs via social media. Importantly, novel evaluations are provided about (1) how pharmaceutical companies use social media for DTCA, (2) how greatly companies reach and interact with consumers through social media, and (3) how likely people are to be exposed to drug efficacy claims and information about illegal pharmacies when searching for information about pharmaceutical drugs via social media. Respectively, the results suggest that (1) pharmaceutical companies avoid making drug product claims but frequently post help-seeking content, (2) thousands of people often view and share content posted by pharmaceutical companies, and (3) people are likely to be exposed to drug product claims and information about illegal pharmacies when searching for information about popular pharmaceutical drugs on social media.

More specifically, approximately 40% of all pharmaceutical companies’ Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube posts in our sample met the FDA’s definition of a help-seeking advertisement. This content focuses on generating awareness of a health condition or disease and often suggests that the audience should learn about potential treatment options from their doctor or other source. Despite concerns that specific drugs would be heavily advertised through pharmaceutical companies’ social media accounts, product claim advertisements were uncommon. Only approximately 1% of posts contained a product claim. However, one-third of the product claim posts did not include any information on drug risks, thus failing to adhere to FDA regulations for traditional DTCA. Although this occurred in a relatively small number of posts overall, the problems surrounding the absence of risk information in product claims is well documented [2,4,5,25]. The FDA has developed draft guidelines for eDTCA regulations [26], and the inclusion of risk information is required for all company postings about specific products. To increase compliance with fair-balance rules on social media, the FDA should finalize the eDTCA regulations and formally detail how regulatory oversight will be enacted. Although monitoring every single post is likely unfeasible, the FDA could follow the procedures of this study to regularly monitor a random selection of posts and require pharmaceutical companies to notify the FDA whenever they use any media to share information with the public that is consistent with traditional forms of DTCA.

It is particularly important for the FDA to monitor pharmaceutical companies’ social media accounts because they can have rather large audiences. Pharmaceutical companies’ social media pages averaged approximately 45,000 followers or subscribers. Additionally, our results indicate that audience members are actively interacting with companies and sharing the content that the companies’ post with people in their own social networks. For instance, posts are often liked and shared on Facebook and favorited and retweeted on Twitter. The public approval of this information on users’ social network pages increases the potential for these posts to influence a large portion of the public. For example, research suggests that health behaviors and attitudes often spread through social networks and a number of social media-based interventions have shown that exposure to health information on social networking sites leads to health behavior change [27,28]. Thus, the messages that pharmaceutical companies share through social media channels have the potential to reach and influence millions of people worldwide; estimates of direct exposure grossly underestimate the cumulative influence of eDTCA on social media.

One common concern regarding eDTCA is that positive (and potentially misleading) product claim testimonials would populate the user-generated comments on pharmaceutical companies’ pages [3,4]. Approximately 25% of posts had at least one comment and most were supportive of the company. However, very few comments contained information that would be classified as DTCA if the pharmaceutical company had produced the comments. Most commonly, user-generated comments contained information that resembled content that would appear in a help-seeking ad. When users did make drug product claims, however, they tended to focus either exclusively on benefits or risks. Additionally, most companies did not explicitly prohibit users from making product claims in their commenting policies. According to current FDA draft guidance documents, pharmaceutical companies are not responsible for the content of user-generated comments unless the comments were created by, paid for, or edited by the company [29,30]. Most commenting policies did, however, suggest that inaccurate information would be removed. Under current FDA draft guidance documents, pharmaceutical companies can, but are not required to, correct misinformation about their products in user-generated comments [30]. Interestingly, companies with commenting guidelines had significantly more positive comments than those without a commenting policy. Although it cannot be determined through this analysis, companies who are more aware of user-generated comments (and thus have a commenting policy) might be deleting negative user-generated comments [4]. If companies selectively delete user-generated comments, the information in the remaining user-generated comments would be applicable to FDA regulations [29,30].

Although uncommon on pharmaceutical companies’ sites, product claims and testimonials were largely present in posts resulting from general searches for drug information on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The majority of the top search results contained drug efficacy claims. Troublingly, most claims were made by nonexpert sources and mentioned only benefits of the drug rather than presenting a balanced view of both the benefits and risks of product use. Given that approximately 20% of Internet users check online reviews of particular drugs [31], our results suggest that consumers are likely getting incomplete drug information through social media. Additionally, around 25% of these posts were testimonials, a format that often enhances the credibility of the claims made [3-5]. Furthermore, it is likely that well-known and trusted media such as Facebook lend credibility to the health information posted within their pages relative to other online channels [9]. For example, young adults, the most prolific users of social networking sites [6], are the most likely age group to trust health information on social media [32] and to search for health advice and others’ health experiences on social media [13].

The potential credibility afforded to information on social media is also problematic when we consider the continued presence of illegal pharmacies in the top search results. Illegal pharmacies were most prominent on Facebook; approximately 20% of the Facebook pages in the drug-specific analysis advertised illegal pharmacies. Although Facebook’s terms of use prohibit illegal activity [33] and the organization is partnered with the Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies [8], our results suggest Facebook is not adequately policing its site for illegal pharmacies. We echo the calls of other scholars for social media companies to actively monitor their sites and make meaningful policy changes to eliminate this type of content [7,8,15]. Past policy changes demonstrate that social media organizations can have a measurable impact on the presence of pharmaceutical drug information on their sites. For example, Facebook eliminated companies’ ability to block the commenting feature on their pages in 2011, so many of the drug product pages that existed in previous analyses [12] were discontinued [3]. Thus, these sites need to take an active role in protecting their users from harmful illegal pharmacies.

There are some limitations to the present study. First, we focused our analysis on the top pharmaceutical companies and best-selling drugs. As a cost-effective marketing strategy, smaller companies might rely on social media advertising more so than larger companies and pharmaceutical companies might use social media channels to introduce newer, less established drugs to the marketplace [3]. Additionally, although we analyzed a large number of postings, our review only focused on 1 year of social media activity. As marketing trends constantly change [12], future research should investigate if the presence of eDTCA changes over time. Last, we focused on the presence of product claims, benefits, and risks and did not examine the accuracy of the claims or whether benefits or risks were emphasized within in a single post. To get a more complete picture of the pharmaceutical drug information that appears on social media sites, future research should explore these areas.

Social media sites are an accessible channel for pharmaceutical companies and others to easily deliver drug information to millions of people across the globe. Although pharmaceutical companies are not directly marketing specific products through their social media accounts often, they are posting content similar to help-seeking DTCA, which describes a health condition without providing a specific solution. If people search for drug solutions to these ailments via social media sites, they will likely be exposed to testimonials that highlight pharmaceutical drug benefits over risks as well as links to pharmacies where they can illegally purchase these drugs. Thus, pharmaceutical drug information on social media sites is potentially quite dangerous to public health and should be monitored accordingly.