Hundreds of pharmaceutical experts, advertising specialists and social media gurus will be descending Thursday on Washington to tell the U.S. Food and Drug Administration how it should regulate ads on everything from Google to Facebook.
The two-day meeting is a widely sought after event by FDA standards. More than 900 people wanted to register for the event but only 350 got seats.
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FDA's uncertainty about how it should regulate Web ads has compounded problems. The FDA sent waves through the pharmaceutical and ad industries when, after markets closed on a Friday evening in April, it posted warnings to 14 major pharmaceutical companies for misleading Internet ads that appear when people do online queries through search engines like Yahoo! and Google.
It is these sort of surprises that the industry wants to avoid. So they, along with representatives from Google Inc. (GOOG), groups like Consumers Union and WebMD Health Corp. (WBMD), will give their opinions about how the agency should regulate Internet ads.
One of the main questions is whether the FDA will treat Internet ads the same as, or differently from, ads on television and in print magazines.
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Google spokesman Eric Obenzinger said a company representative plans to tell the FDA how important the Internet is for consumers researching health information. He said there are more than 4.5 billion searches annually for health information.
Google also plans to propose a new type of search ad that would be designed only for FDA-regulated companies and, the company hopes, "satisfy the FDA's desire" for a balance of risk and benefit information. The ad would appear next to searches and would include an extra line for risk information and a link to further risk information.
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