Biggest drug com­pa­nies halt­ed Twit­ter ad buys af­ter Lil­ly in­sulin spoof

Al­most all of the drug in­dus­try’s biggest ad­ver­tis­ers cut their spend­ing on Twit­ter to ze­ro or near-ze­ro over the last two weeks amid wor­ries about im­per­son­ation of their brands by pranksters and the fu­ture of the so­cial me­dia com­pa­ny.

Among 18 of the biggest phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ad­ver­tis­ers in the US mar­ket, 12 cut their Twit­ter ad spend­ing to noth­ing for the week be­gin­ning Nov. 14, ac­cord­ing to Path­mat­ics, which tracks da­ta on pre­scrip­tion drug ad spend­ing as well as gen­er­al cor­po­rate ad­ver­tis­ing. The list of drug­mak­ers cut­ting spend­ing to ze­ro in­cludes Mer­ck, As­traZeneca, Eli Lil­ly, No­var­tis, Pfiz­er and oth­ers.

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