Ro pauses advertising of weight loss drug Wegovy amid shortages

Telehealth company Ro has paused advertising of the obesity drug Wegovy as the drug suffers shortages, a reversal in aggressive promotional efforts by the provider that involved splashy ads in subway stations.

Novo Nordisk, the maker of Wegovy, said last month it would limit its starting doses for new patients and pause advertising of the drug to avoid stimulating further demand. “Following Novo’s lead, we’ve paused key promotional efforts (including all TV),” Zachariah Reitano, chief executive of Ro, wrote Monday in a post on its site. “We’re reassessing other promotional plans as well.”

Ro said in an email that it wasn’t asked by Novo to pause advertising, but rather it chose to do this independently.

Wegovy has exploded in popularity for its effectiveness in helping people shed weight, leading telehealth companies to offer the drug as well as similar medications like Ozempic and Mounjaro. WW International, known as WeightWatchers, this year bought telehealth company Sequence, which prescribes these drugs. And Noom, which has long endorsed a psychological approach to weight loss, also started offering Wegovy.

Ro was especially aggressive in marketing its obesity program, plastering ads showing people injecting medications into their abdomens on New York City subway walls and turnstiles. Ro even named Wegovy by name in those ads, wading into a regulatory gray area of direct-to-consumer drug advertising.

The moves Ro is now taking show the ripple effects Wegovy’s shortages are having on telehealth companies that have raced into the space. Reitano said in his post that Ro is also issuing credits to consumers if they can’t pick up Wegovy, and the company is trying to add more treatment options.

Competition to offer weight loss drugs directly to consumers has been heated. As more telehealth providers have jumped onto the trend, Calibrate, which started prescribing obesity medications even before Wegovy was approved, recently said it will start to focus more on partnering with employers.

Novo expects people to have difficulty filling lower doses of Wegovy through September, but there could be another obesity drug on the market soon. Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro is currently approved for diabetes but has been used off-label for weight loss. It’s shown potential for even greater weight loss than Wegovy, and analysts expect it could be approved as an obesity treatment later this year.

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