As biologics makers face off in the increasingly jammed immunology sector, unbranded education is giving way to product messaging on the web.

Excluding older products that have deprioritized paid initiatives, almost 50% of traffic to brand sites has been driven through paid display ads and search, according to a recently  completed analysis of digital activity.

Immunology stalwarts like AbbVie’s Humira and Amgen’s Enbrel still account for most product searches. However, the three performing the best online — AbbVie’s Skyrizi and Rinvoq as well as Bristol Myers Squibb’s Sotyktu — have been able to direct more than 40% of such searches to their brand.com sites, per data collected by Ipsos Healthcare.

What’s more, paid traffic for this trio has doubled in the past year, as other brands have seen low or no traffic growth. It’s largely by design, the data suggest, that patients hunting for information are finding their way to the corporate ecosystems rather than to third-party sites like WebMD.com, Drugstore.com or an advocacy group.

“Typically, in a more digitally mature market, you tend to see a lot of content primarily driven for educational purposes,” explained Ashwin Balasubramanian, a director at Ipsos Healthcare who authored the analysis. “In the immunology space, you see content being focused toward the customer acquisition funnel. There’s not a whole lot of educational content through unbranded sites currently on the market.”

Immunology has long been a lucrative therapeutic area for pharma. From rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis to Crohn’s disease and colitis, the biggest brands have racked up multiple indications on the way to blockbuster sales. 

However, a power shift is afoot, as Sotyktu, which launched in December, challenges the in-market leaders largely through digital tactics, and Rinvoq and Skyrizi leverage online as well as traditional DTC campaigns to increase awareness. 

Potentially more disruptive is the situation with Humira (adalimumab). The autoimmune megablockbuster, which ruled sales charts between 2011 and 2022, lost patent protection in January, spurring the debut of Amgen’s Amjevita biosimilar. 

At the start of July, seven more adalimumab biosimilars entered the market. Since their approval announcements, Balasubramanian said he’s seen the trend of biologics trying to “capture the space” by upping paid marketing. 

“There’s been a concerted push to invest in paid marketing and digital efforts to increase awareness quickly,” he observed. “This has been one of the strong drivers for the changes in the marketing dynamic overall.”

That said, content strategies among the biologics brands lack differentiation. SEO and paid advertising have become the overall driver of increased awareness and digital footprint. Still, that could change.

Unsurprisingly, Ipsos has seen a surge in buzz and engagement for biosimilars since Amjevita’s debut. The “ripple effect,” said Balasubramanian, has extended not just to Amjevita but to other, in-market biosimilars, among them Pfizer’s Inflectra, an older biosimilar to Johnson & Johnson immunology drug Remicade.

With multiple “bHumira” drugs now available, Ipsos sees early signs of a “paradigm shift” in the online landscape, as both patients and healthcare professionals (HCP) look to learn about these treatment alternatives. That means the stage is set for these new drugs to expand their digital footprint.

“There’s an opportunity for the biosimilars to be more agile in a digital format,” explained Steve Reeves, SVP of digital strategy at Ipsos. “We’re not seeing them do a whole lot at this point, but we’re seeing a ton of white space opportunities.”

To the extent they take strides to shape their narrative, build content and deploy digital strategies, the biosimilars will need to do so differently than the biologic brands. 

The latter are primarily targeted and focused on moving consumers through the brand-adoption funnel. This includes raising awareness via paid ads and SEO to getting patients onto their platforms, where users see content designed to improve brand consideration and patient-support enrollment. 

Biosimilars, on the other hand, have two funnels, Balasubramanian pointed out. Before generating treatment consideration and adoption, they first must increase awareness of biosimilars as a category. Only then can they boost their brands themselves. 

As a result, Ipsos says, the monthly traffic measures for many of these platforms remain low in comparison. What the biosimilar platforms have going for them, though, is much deeper engagement than biologics brands and even advocacy groups. 

HCPs are particularly interested in aspects like the role of interchangeability status and the regulatory pathway for biosimilars, Ipsos found, driving up the length of time they spend on biosimilars corporate portals.

“There is an imminent need for patients and for HCPs to get more educational information, so physicians especially are not just seeking information on biosimilar products. They want to understand the overall market,” Balasubramanian said.

Over the next year, aspects like formulary status, discount and interchangeability status will start playing a role, he predicted, as these brands start to build up a more significant digital presence. Boehringer Ingelheim’s Cyltezo is the only Humira biosimilar that’s been able to secure interchangeability status thus far.

Since July, Cigna’s pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) Express Scripts and UnitedHealth Group’s PBM OptumRx added two biosimilar brands — Cyltezo and Novartis’ Hyrimoz — and one low-list price biosimilar, Coherus BioSciences’ Yusimry option, to their primary national formularies, at an equivalent tier as Humira and Amjevita.

“To date, PBMs have kept Humira on the same tier as biosimilars given hesitancy to force switching on patients, but we think this could change over time as doctors become more familiar with the biosimilar options,” wrote Goldman Sachs analysts in a research note last month.

Beyond that, many PBMs are on record as saying they haven’t done much in terms of driving utilization of biosimilars in 2023 but plan to do more of that next year, Amgen EVP Murdo Gordon said on the company’s recent earnings call.

Mark Cuban’s disruptive Cost Plus Drug Company, which sells generics at cost plus a fixed 15% margin, will offer Coherus’ biosimilar Humira for $579 this year, less than 10% of AbbVie’s list price for a month’s supply.

“Right now, the focus is on increasing the adoption for biosimilars as a whole and increasing education,” reiterated Balasubramanian. “The next stage, over the next year, will be for these brands to differentiate among themselves. You’re going to see biosimilars play a big role. The biosimilars market is also going to become a very crowded marketing space.”