Pharmaceutical companies ‘need to revamp YouTube presence’

Pharmaceutical companies with a presence on YouTube could be posed with a fresh set of strategic challenges due to the introduction of a new format for the popular video streaming site.

The Google-owned service introduced its mobile-friendly and flexible One Channel layout last month, thus posing problems for drug companies, which need to consider the concerns of their medical, legal and regulatory departments when altering their social media presence.

Google has therefore given pharmaceutical firms an additional month past the May 15th deadline to switch over their channels, with the technology firm confirming to Medical Marketing and Media that channel owners can still turn off comments or limit videos to being played only on the main YouTube site.

Mark Bard, co-founder of the Digital Health Coalition, advised: "Pharma wants to know what a redesign will look like six months ahead of time, but that's not realistic … In a market where innovation is the norm you should plan for change as a given."

According to figures quoted by consultancy firm Creation Healthcare for PharmaPhorum in December 2012, Johnson and Johnson is the pharmaceutical company with the highest number of YouTube channel views, followed by Pfizer and Novartis.