The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against IQVIA Holdings Inc. in an effort to block its Propel Media Inc. acquisition. The complaint accuses the proposed acquisition of potentially posing threatening competition for programmatic advertising designed to regulate healthcare costs, according to a July 17 news release.
“Protecting competition in the emerging health care programmatic advertising market plays a critical role in lowering health care costs, including the cost of prescription drugs.” FTC Bureau of Competition Director Holly Vedova said in the release. “Given the rampant consolidation across the pharmaceutical industry, it’s critical that the market for health care product advertising remains competitive to ensure that patients and their doctors have access to high quality, affordable products.”
The transaction would eliminate competition between programmatic advertising providers, Lasso and DeepIntent, driving the cost of needs, the release reported. The merger would also present challenges for potential new entrants and rival companies and limit health care practitioners from learning about effective pharmaceutical products.
“Because IQVIA’s datasets are considered the “gold standard” among health care industry participants, health care advertisers frequently prefer that demand-side platforms use IQVIA data in their programmatic advertising campaigns to health care professionals,” a recent FTC report revealed, according to the release. “According to the complaint, if IQVIA and PMI merge, IQVIA will have the ability and incentive to leverage its control over these important datasets to foreclose or otherwise disadvantage current or emerging rivals to DeepIntent and Lasso, raising prices for its data, reducing data quality or restricting advertisers from using its data.”
The company has approved FTC staff’s ability to seek a temporary restraining order, ruled in a 3-0 vote, and preliminary injunction in federal district court to further examine the proposal and “prevent IQVIA from consummating its acquisition of PMI, pending the agency’s administrative proceeding,” the release said. “The FTC’s administrative and federal court complaints will be made available at a later time.”
