Author: Molly Donovan and Steven Cernak
The Federal Trade Commission has sued to block IQVIA’s proposed acquisition of Propel Media—a deal the FTC says would combine two of the top three providers of programmatic advertising that target U.S. healthcare providers on a one-to-one basis. The FTC says IQVIA and Propel both operate demand-side platforms or “DSPs” (called Lasso and DeepIntent, respectively) in an already-concentrated “healthcare provider programmatic advertising market” (a “subset of the total healthcare digital advertising industry”). And the FTC argues the deal would result in further concentration in that market and would significantly decrease advertising competition, which would contribute to higher prescription drug costs for U.S. consumers.
