Week 4: Analyzing Airtime

Greetings, airtime analysts! Now that our framework is set, we can begin exploring what public databases have to offer about the selected drugs of choice. Over the past weeks, I’ve identified three drugs that are advertised direct-to-consumer with relatively similar amounts of airtime data for consistent comparisons. After selecting these drugs, I manually collected data on how often a commercial for a drug appeared on television over a two-year period, specifically 2023 and 2024.

Selected Drugs

The specific drugs I have chosen to study across the course of my project are Ozempic®, SKYRIZI®, and DUPIXENT®. 

Ozempic® (semaglutide) is a GLP-1 injection for adults with type 2 diabetes. It is proven to lower blood sugar and A1C; lower the risk of major cardiovascular events like stroke, heart attack, or death in adults who already have heart disease; and lower the risk of worsening kidney disease and other complications. Its recent widespread advertising and strong presence in today’s media and online discussions make it a key drug for analyzing public awareness trends.

SKYRIZI® (risankizumab‐rzaa) is a biologic used to treat moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, and Crohn’s disease. Its advertisements are widely recognized to this day for their consistent messages and emphasis on long-term symptom relief, making SKYRIZI® a strong candidate for tracking how repeated exposure influences consumer interest over time.

DUPIXENT® (dupilumab) is a monoclonal antibody prescription used to treat conditions such as eczema, asthma, and chronic sinusitis with nasal polyps. In its commercials, DUPIXENT® frequently highlights improvements in quality of life, making it especially useful for analyzing emotional impact’s correlation to public engagement. 

Collecting Airtime Data

Beyond the fact that most of you have probably seen at least one of these ads while watching your favorite TV shows, these drugs also have substantial amounts of publicly available airtime data.

Using Internet Archive’s TV News Archive (archive.org/details/tv), I filtered each drug by name within the years 2023 and 2024 to track how often each drug was mentioned daily. After spending days distinguishing between mentions in news segments, other programs, and actual commercials, I compiled a spreadsheet of this data that reflects the true frequency of televised advertisements for each drug. The numbers on the chart under each date on each year represents the number of times a commercial was aired on that day. For example, for January 1, 2023 for the drug Ozempic®, the number 9 means that 9 Ozempic® commercials were aired that day.

If you’re interested in exploring the data yourself, feel free to check it out here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/163-6EA6IB6Wc043hF1K0sJT0yqWN5yuMI4Wk4RopeS0/edit?usp=sharing 

Now that the airtime data has been collected, the next step is to break it down into patterns by identifying when these ads are most prominent and how these periods align with other search trends. See ya in the next one!

Citations

“What Is Ozempic®? | Ozempic® (Semaglutide) Injection 0.5 Mg or 1 Mg.” Ozempic, Novo Nordisk, 2024, www.ozempic.com/why-ozempic/what-is-ozempic.html. 

“Discover SKYRIZI® (Risankizumab-Rzaa).” Skyrizi, www.skyrizi.com/. 

‌“Take Action with DUPIXENT® (Dupilumab).” Dupixent, www.dupixent.com/. 

‌“Internet Archive TV NEWS : Search Captions. Borrow Broadcasts.” Internet Archive, archive.org/details/tv.