Week 7: From Posts to Prescriptions

Welcome back social media dwellers! I hope all of you had a great spring break and are ready to dive back into more data collection antics. This week, I’ll be covering social media keyword frequency data as well as the prescription and sales information that will help build the foundation for combining all of my datasets for analysis in the coming weeks.

Social Media Frequency

Continuing from last week’s adjustments, I focused on collecting keyword frequency data from Reddit as an added measure of public awareness. Using keyword searches for the name of each drug, I tracked how often posts with these terms appeared over my selected time period from January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2024.

Reddit proved to be especially useful because of its open-access structure and consistent archive system, allowing me to gather monthly data that aligns with my other datasets through the PullPush website I mentioned in my last post. Compared to other platforms which have more restricted data access, Reddit provides a clearer and more reliable picture of how often people discuss these drugs online.

The dataset I linked below will serve as an additional layer to my Google search data, helping capture the active engagement and discussion of these drugs. The numbers on the Social Media Frequent tabs represent the number of posts with that term on a certain day or month.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W0KJ-N1_Ch1uZXbPoitE0uAwdygc0SF7_c7ogmgqeCs/edit?usp=sharing 

Prescription and Sales Info

To complement my advertising and awareness data, I also gathered prescription-related insights through sales data for each drug. Since direct prescription counts are not always publicly available, sales figures serve as a strong source for prescription uptake and drug use.

Across 2023 and 2024, all three of my selected drugs showed significant growth in sales, reinforcing their prominence in the pharmaceutical market and consumer awareness. Ozempic experienced rapid growth, reaching around $17.5 billion in global sales in 2024 and displaying a 25% increase from 2023 sales. SKYRIZI showed some of the fastest growth among the three, reaching $11.7 billion in 2024 sales with a growth rate of over 50% from 2023. DUPIXENT also demonstrated strong growth, increasing from around $11.6 billion to over 14 billion, a rise of about 22% from 2023 to 2024. 

All the above data was gathered from a secondary source, and thus there is the underlying concern about inaccuracies. I have crosschecked the data from the source used with various other sources, namely from the ProAct 2025 Drug Trend Report, Statista, and reports from the pharmaceutical companies of these drugs (Novo Nordisk, AbbVie, Sanofi), which display similar numbers and trends. Due to discrepancies in the wide array of different reports, I’ve chosen to focus on a singular source that provides this data for all the drugs I’ve selected to prevent further discrepancies. 

Here is the data for the sales difference between 2023 and 2024:

With advertising data, search trends, social media frequency, and sales figures now all in place, the next step is bringing everything together to uncover whether spikes in attention translate into real impact.

Citations

Buntz, Brian. “2024’S Blockbusters: Top 25 Drugs by Sales.” Drug Discovery and Development, 4 Apr. 2025, www.drugdiscoverytrends.com/2024s-blockbusters-top-50-pharmaceuticals-by-sales/. 

“PullPush Reddit Search Tool.” Pullpush.io, search.pullpush.io. 

Sources Referenced

“AbbVie Reports Full-Year and Fourth-Quarter 2024 Financial Results.” AbbVie News Center, 2024, news.abbvie.com/2025-01-31-AbbVie-Reports-Full-Year-and-Fourth-Quarter-2024-Financial-Results. 

Becker, Zoey. “AbbVie, Hitting Record Sales on Skyrizi Gains, Holds Its Own in Growing IBD Arena despite J&J Competition.” Fierce Pharma, 4 Feb. 2026, www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/abbvie-hitting-record-sales-high-skyrizi-gains-holds-its-own-growing-ibd-arena-despite-jj. 

Fourreau, Valentine. “Infographic: Ozempic Now a Major Player on the Diabetes Drug Market.” Statista Daily Data, Statista, 26 Nov. 2025, www.statista.com/chart/35435/revenue-diabetes-medication/?srsltid=AfmBOor-XVW_8qc1yamifh4XFwePCnFSEGiKShnQeb8NXJsAMgvVmWeW. 

“ProAct 2025 Drug Trend Report.” ProAct, https://7006190.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/7006190/DTR/Drug%20Trend%20Report%202025.pdf 

“U.S. Dupixent Market Size & Share | Industry Report, 2033.” Grand View Research, 2024, www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/us-dupixent-market-report.