chemotherapy
Photo by Rhoda Baer
US cancer centers have substantially increased spending for consumer-directed advertising in recent years, according to researchers.
The team looked at consumer advertising for 890 cancer centers and found that total advertising spending for these centers increased from $54,229,849 in 2005 to $173,510,900 in 2014.
The researchers reported these findings in a letter to JAMA Internal Medicine.
The team analyzed data from an agency that tracks the content and number of advertisements and calculates expenditures. An advertiser was considered a cancer center if its name contained certain key words.
Advertising expenditure data covered 6 media outlets: television, magazines, radio, newspapers, billboards, and the Internet.
According to these data, from 2005 to 2014, 890 cancer centers advertised to the public. In general, inflation-adjusted spending increased for all of the types of advertising the researchers analyzed.
The team said the greatest relative growth in spending was for Internet display advertisements, which increased from less than 1% of total advertising spending in 2005 ($302,030/$54,229,849) to 5% in 2014 ($8,633,000/$173,510,900).
The researchers also found that, in 2014, 20 cancer centers accounted for 86% of the roughly $174 million total advertising spending.
Cancer Treatment Centers of America spent the most (at $101.7 million), followed by MD Anderson Cancer Center (at $13.9 million) and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (at $9.1 million).
Among the 20 centers, 5 were for-profit, 17 were Commission on Cancer-accredited, and 9 were National Cancer Institute-designated.
The researchers said their findings likely underestimate advertising spending because the available data didn’t include all types of advertising, such as ads in cancer-specific magazines.
The team also said the effect of cancer-center advertising on the quality and costs of cancer care should be investigated.
