Skip to main content
| Hans-Günter Meyer-Thompson | International

Google search data used by pharma giant to bombard users with ads for addictive opioids

Google search data used by pharma giant to bombard users with ads for addictive opioids

A manufacturer of highly addictive painkillers has been using data-matching techniques to track people's Google health searches and target them with ads that increase in intensity until they respond.

Key points:

Pharmaceutical company Mundipharma uses health searches on Google to target ads The ads appear in web browsers and indirectly reference a brand of addictive oxycodone. The banner ads get more intense until people click on them. Pharmaceutical giant Mundipharma and marketing agency Affinity produced a marketing campaign for the drug oxycodone, which used Google's ad searches tool to identify patients who were unhappy with their current pain medication. (ABC News, Australien, 13.07.2019)

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-13/searches-data-mined-by-pharma-giant-to-promote-new-opioid/11300396