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Pharmaceutical marketers can spend millions to create commercials that target, say, every allergy sufferer who watches “Desperate Housewives” on Sunday nights. Or they can go where people interested in finding out healthcare information are really looking: on the Web.

“We want our clients to service the demand that already exists,” says Larry Mickelberg, vice president, strategy and enablement at Medical Broadcasting Co. (MBC). “We don't want our clients to go on television and troll for audiences when every day hundreds of thousands of people are sitting in front of their computers typing a symptom or brand name in Google.”

AstraZeneca is doing just that with sites like GetBCFacts.com, which advises visitors about breast cancer.

“We wanted to educate women about their risk of recurrence and what they could do to reduce that risk,” says Meryl Weinreb, consumer brand director, oncology at AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP. “It's a scary topic, and we wanted to do it in a positive and empowering way.”

Two years ago, as AstraZeneca geared up for events surrounding Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the company realized there were a group of survivors whose needs weren't being addressed during that month.

In October 2005 the company debuted a series of television spots, developed with Wunderman, called “If You Were My Sister,” in which survivors talked directly to the camera and offered advice to women. The need was felt to supply more detailed information and thus was born the commercials' companion site GetBCFacts.com.

Philadelphia-based Medical Broadcasting created the site for AstraZeneca. The agency, which specializes in working with pharmaceutical, medical device and biotechnology companies, was acquired by Digitas Inc. in January 2006. Mickelberg estimates that 95% of MBC's work is in the interactive space; the remaining 5% of its efforts in other media such as DRTV or print usually supports online campaigns.

One interesting thing Mickelberg is seeing is a gap emerging between the sophistication and behavior of healthcare audiences and the marketers trying to reach them.

“As we track into 2007, [we're finding] that the audiences are way ahead of marketers in their use of various media. So we're watching the industry definitely begin to shift.”

MBC divides pharmaceutical marketing into three stages: demand generation, engaging a consumer to try the product, and community building. “It goes along the purchase continuum from awareness through recognition in terms of demand generation, through consideration and trial, and then through loyalty and adherence,” Mickelberg says.

Since direct-to-consumer television advertising was made legal, there's been a lot of money deployed in DTC campaigns to cast a wide net and try capturing multitudes of a specific ailment's sufferers with a big-budget TV spot.

“That's wasteful by definition, and not necessary,” says Mickelberg, because today more than 150 million people — or 85% of Americans — use the Web to research medical concerns, often starting, of course, on search engines. And so search is a growing component of all of MBC's clients' work.

“There's nothing worse than, say, someone with high cholesterol or a family history of it typing information into a search engine and finding essentially an online ghetto — cheap Canadian prescription drugs, herbal remedies and the occasional piece of promotional material from a pharmaceutical company,” he says. “What they want is much more robust information that addresses their needs, to help them have more informed conversations with their loved ones or their doctors about a diagnosis, symptoms or treatment options.”

Most consumers are fairly sophisticated in their search behavior, researching multiple sites for information. Mickelberg says Google is the number-one site for doctors, who use it as a diagnostic support tool almost as much as consumers choose it as a starting point in their personal healthcare journey.

“Both doctors and consumers want helpful, empathetic places that provide information they can trust,” he says.

While no one is going to respond to pushed-out inquiries about their health, people do self-identify by typing their symptoms into Google.

“We don't have to spend millions of dollars qualifying our audiences,” says Mickelberg. “We have people knocking on our door every day, telling us exactly who they are. It doesn't matter, [for instance,] if it's a housewife who's African American, age 24 to 35. We know that this person on the other side of the computer has a very specific need for health information that our clients should be responding to with a constellation of Web sites, tools and programs.”

Some clients are making use of broadband video technology to make the initial experience for consumers less static and boring.

The first time visitors go to AstraZeneca's GetBCFacts.com they're greeted by a host named Emma. She asks the visitors a few simple diagnostic questions to help determine who they are and why they're visiting the site. For example, a patient with Stage III breast cancer — a serious form of the disease — would be directed to a different experience than a caregiver or someone who was interested in learning more because of a family history of cancer.

The site isn't geared to physicians or healthcare professionals, notes AstraZeneca's Weinreb. Rather, there are two main target audiences: women who've had early stage breast cancer and want to reduce the risk of recurrence, and people who simply want to know more about it.

Every effort is made to make GetBCFacts user friendly. A typical woman who has had breast cancer is over age 50; thus she may appreciate the option to make the text type size a little bigger and easier to read. Areas featuring medical terminology definitions also are highlighted, and users can read the site in Spanish as well. “It's just a common courtesy to visitors,” says Weinreb, who herself is a breast cancer survivor.

Since launch, GetBCFacts has received more than 1 million unique visitors. Traffic tends to spike when television spots are running, usually in May to coincide with nationwide “Races for the Cure”; National Survivors Day (early June); and Breast Cancer Awareness Month (October).

The most popular areas of the site aren't surprising, says Weinreb. Visitors essentially are looking at information about risk factors, symptoms, diagnosis and the risk of recurrence.

AstraZeneca's branding on the site is intentionally subdued, she says. “The site is for patients, not to promote the brand.”

AstraZeneca uses search and banner advertising to publicize GetBCFacts, and distributes in-office promotional materials to doctors. Television is the primary traffic driver.

While the site's information can be accessed without offering any data, AstraZeneca encourages people to sign up for things like a brochure called “Chicken Soup for the Breast Cancer Soul” or receive packets of information, customized for specific needs. “For example,” says Weinreb, “if you've done everything right but still [have a recurrence], we can send appropriate materials to you.”

AstraZeneca also sponsors “In Your Corner,” a support program for people who are taking a breast cancer drug called Arimidex.

As for the site's business goal, Weinreb says AstraZeneca doesn't really track the return on investment of its online disease education efforts.

“A well-informed patient who is prepared to have a partnership with their physician and gets all the facts hopefully will pick the best treatment,” she notes. “We like to think we offer treatments that physicians will offer to their patients. In that sense, a well-educated patient is good for business. But ultimately, it's about what is best for the patient. If it's appropriate, they'll get our drug. But if it's not appropriate, we don't want them to take our drug.”

Weinreb says GetBCFacts is continually evolving as the company works to improve navigation and does research to determine other things people might want to know more about. “We didn't create the site and then put it up on a shelf and say ‘We're done.’”

AstraZeneca maintains other unbranded online disease education sites, including HeartHealthCounts.com and IsItBipolar.com. “We have an overall commitment to disease education,” says Weinreb.

In the future, that education may be in more than one place online. Mickelberg feels the Web is becoming more about distribution than destination.

“Rather than just driving people to a site, we can drive information to where people are on the Web,” he notes. “We can take content and put it in banner ads and [on] other sites where people may be surfing, tailoring content to individuals who need it without them even visiting our site.”