Mass tort TV ads in serious slump as pandemic drags on

(Reuters) – Law firms for the second year in a row are spending less on television advertising seeking clients for lawsuits against the makers of drugs and consumer products, a potential side effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, a firm that tracks attorney advertising said on Tuesday.

Lawyers and legal referral services through October had spent an estimated $74 million on mass tort TV advertising, down 55.6% from the same period in 2020, a year that itself marked a decline in ad spending, according to data analyzed by X Ante.

The volume of TV advertising has declined as well, with about 433,000 ads for the first 10 months of 2021 compared to 766,000 during the same period last year, X Ante said, citing data from advertising tracking firm Kantar CMAG.

Rustin Silverstein, X Ante’s president and founder, said the decline continued a trend his firm began seeing as the COVID-19 pandemic got underway in early 2020. That year, an estimated $183 million was spent, down from $216 million in 2019.

Potential factors behind the decline include delays in litigation prompted by the pandemic, which last year forced many courts to temporarily close and created litigation backlogs that delayed the ability of cases to go to trial.

Silverstein said delays in the ability of lawyers to pursue their cases and settle them may have resulted in the “subsequent delay of attorney payments to fund future advertising due to the pandemic.”

Silverstein said the decline may also have been due to certain big cases that had been the subject of ads winding down and lawyers shifting their ad spending from TV to online, as attorneys increasingly turn to social media.

In September and October, the top subject of ads by dollars spent was the weedkiller paraquat, sold by Chevron Corp and Syngenta Group, with $3.55 million spent, down 41% from two months earlier. It also ranked No. 1 by number of ads at 18,581.

Ads about paraquat have been on the rise in 2021 after the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation in June consolidated lawsuits alleging it causes Parkinson’s disease before a federal judge in Illinois. More than 640 cases are pending.

Other top ad topics in September and October include abuse claims against the Catholic Church; Koninklijke Philips NV’s sleep apnea continuous positive airway pressure machines; hernia mesh; Bayer’s Roundup weedkiller; and natural disaster and hurricane insurance cases.

Read more:

Lawyer ads seeking Catholic Church abuse victims surge, report findsSo. District Illinois wins fierce battle for paraquat MDL venue

Mass tort TV ads fell in 2020 amid drop in Roundup advertising

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