I can't help but think that pressure from "Big Pharma" is extending its tentacles into the search engine world to protect bloated profits.
The first two points make good sense, however the third policy point could be open to interpretation and to me could potentially exclude all importation into U.S. of "generic" drugs which cost much, much less that "brand" drugs. Am I off base here? Looking forward to other opinions.
clearly indicate on your website that an existing
prescription is required to purchase prescription drugs.Pharmaceutical ads may not target the UK for any reason.
Ads or keywords to the United States for drugs not approved by the FDA are NOT allowed.
[edited by: Shak at 10:17 pm (utc) on June 23, 2003]
looks like everyone in this area is being given advance notice (7 > 14 days) before editorial teams start going through and taking action.
apparently applies to BOTH premium and adwords customers.
suppose its a follow up from this:
[webmasterworld.com...]
I wondered what took them so long....
Be interesting to see if they go as far as Teoma/ASK in the UK, and remove URLS from the index aswell as CPC models.
As far as the UK is concerned, this just leaves Overture and Looksmart. Espotting pulled out some time ago.
Shak
Why would they want to put their sales force out of business? It's not like they are retailers themselves.
I can't help but think that pressure from "Big Pharma" is extending its tentacles into the search engine world to protect bloated profits.
Sounds like some good basic, liability, Google-lawyering catch-up to me--err, unless there's a case pending that is.
The noose is tightening on marketing pharmaceuticals and it's only going to get tighter. Maybe this will get rid of some of the 'cowboys'.
Expect more advertising restrictions in the future.
The Google policy does not refer to generics, simply drugs not approved by the FDA. I don't know the exact terminology, but generics have to go through some sort of testing to ensure they are equivalent to the brand name. If so, they are approved. So no problem there.
As I was going to reply after your first attempt at this post: If you didn't know that selling, offering for sale or advertising "drugs not approved by the FDA" ain't legal in the US, well, you might be in the wrong business.
Drugs could be a very dicey area for selling on the Internet -- or anywhere. If you plan to stay in that part of the business I'd suggest you really dot all your i's, cross all your t's and maybe even tilde all your n's.
Just my 2 cents.
Jim
I got the email and it seems that it is quite straightforward stuff. Nothing to complain about anyway.
I don't envy the Google reps who are going to have to sort through all those advertisers to figure out who's playing by the rules and who isn't.
Cheers!
SN
Pharmaceutical ads may not target the UK for any reason
I can see no changes here, the Pharmaceutical ads are still being shown in the UK (15 July 2003). Do we assume that the above statement is not true, or are G keeping this going as long as possible for other reasons?
Either way Google needs to follow up on their statement.
[edited by: Shak at 1:08 pm (utc) on July 15, 2003]
As for geo-targeting - you can set the countries your ad is shown in when you Edit your campaign settings.
DaveN
I'm not 100% sure of this, but I didn't think UK customers could order pharmaceuticals from US sites or any other foreign country because of laws?
Am I wrong?
That is probably the reason why the ads are still up at present, as only by having correct data and feedback will a permanent policy be suitable.
To be honest a lot of the pharmaceutical industry in the UK has cleaned up its act, and the MCA have stopped a number of foreign illegal players from trading anymore.
(imo) the sooner official guidelines are given, the better.
Shak
Sorry just not seen that many post from them to remember there nick
DaveN
I'm pretty sure they are not talking about what are called "pharmaceuticals" in the field of pharmacology (which are "medicines prepaired according to the rules or formulas of pharmacy"--i.e., including gensing / oolong (black) teas, eucalyptus / aloe salves, all variety of hazels, tinctures, essences and abstracts, &c).
It sounds to me like what they mean are those limited pharmaceuticals that we call "perscription drugs."
Jordan
yes, its prescription drugs not all pharmaceuticals
Thank you. That makes sense to me since not all <edit>USFDA</edit> approved prescription drugs are approved for sale in the UK (and obviously, not without a prescription even if they are).
Jordan
I know that this has been the subject of ongoing effort here. Please give me a day or two to hunt down the right person, and I'll see what I can find out either way.
DaveN
some online pharmacies will have a doctor do a consult. You don't need a "prior" prescription, but the doctor is the one online who determines whether the medication is appropriate. I assume this is okay since the med requires a prescription but cannot be gotten w/o the online consult.
Does that seem right?
Also , would this mean all the overseas pharmacies that mail to the US would no longer be able to advertise?
DaveN
The fact is you cannot advertise a prescription drug but information and the name of the pharmacy/website is the key.
I'm not seeing any pill stores been advertised in the UK when I switch into invisible mode ;) I'm getting different serps as well as adwords showing V ads and drug store sites.
DaveN
I am not sure whereyou are based, but if you have ever seen Pfizer's attempt to advertise a certail ED drug on TV you'll understand how the UK works.
We have Pele never mentioning the V word, but actually stating the ED term and offering all who care to listen a website and a toll-free number where they can get help.
Pfizer pops up at the top of the screen as the sponsor, but as I said the V word is never mentioned.
IMHO the advertising team at google and e-spotting threw a blanket over the policy of ads related to prescription drugs.
Rather then coming up with a defined method they have simply blocked advertising on the KW's, playing it safe.
But there is a defined method for advertising and a UK protocol, and cracking that is unfortunately expensive (lawyers) and time consuming.
To turn this around, and show exactly how far you can go in the UK, it will be interesting to see how far a website (and this includes how far in content) can advertise offline i.e. in posters, on taxis, etc etc.
The fact is that this is new territory, and online ads were taking the p*ss but b/c the powers that be at google etc have dramatically cut things off does not mean that this reflects the extent of the uk legal boundaries.
Their (G's) criteria will be to play it safe and get well over onto the right side of the law (fair enough), and it may not be financially worth it to them to build the software to weed out and police their playing field in this case.
