Oncologist Goetz Kloecker is in new ads for Merck's Keytruda as part of the company's "It's Tru" campaign. The doctor is alone in one ad and featured in a second that includes a woman who is being treated for advanced non-small cell lung cancer with Keytruda.

Seventy-eight percent of US marketers employ an in-house agency, an increase from 2013's 58%, the Association of National Advertisers has found. The survey found that 76% of marketers use their in-house unit to manage creative while 24% employ it to handle programmatic.

Human Design worked with new wellness brand Ladder to create one 60-second anthem and eight 30-second videos starring the brand's co-founders: Cindy Crawford, LeBron James, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lindsey Vonn. "Each founding celebrity is heavily invested in the product's efficacy and benefit for people who use it," said John Weiss, chief creative officer of Human Design.

Twenty-three percent of antibiotic prescriptions for children and adults in the US were inappropriate, with improper prescribing more prevalent among adult patients, researchers reported in The BMJ. However, the analysis of claims from 2016 showed that 40% to 50% of pediatric antibiotic prescriptions were only "potentially appropriate," indicating they may not have been needed, said researcher Kao-Ping Chua.

Facebook is creating a tool that will enable third-party brand safety firms working on behalf of advertisers to automate block-list management. Agency executives share their concerns that the platform's brand safety controls are insufficient given its plethora of video inventory and say that quality is a concern even with the company's premium ad buying service, In-Stream Reserve.

Points North Group reports that Instagram's fake follower numbers haven't been dented since the platform declared a crackdown on the problem, an allegation the company denies, saying its efforts have seen "promising results." Instagram pledged to use artificial intelligence to root out inauthentic audiences and ban third-party apps that help influencers fraudulently boost their followers.

A Pew Research Center survey has found that while 74% of US adult Facebook users didn't know that Facebook kept track of their interests and traits for ads, just over half were uncomfortable with the practice. "Americans, being Americans, say that it matters, but they behave in a way that doesn't indicate that it matters," said Pew's Lee Rainie.

Legacy brands must "botify" their customer experience to compete against digitally native competitors, which means breaking down internal silos and bureaucracy to capture data insights and create a digital-first culture, writes Ben Lamm. Traditional brands must change their mindsets to take risks to meet modern consumer demand for delightful digital experiences, he writes.

Diversity and inclusion go beyond race, sexuality and gender to encompass employing staff members who have different backgrounds, talents and experiences and then enabling them to participate meaningfully, writes The Elephant Room's Dan Saxby. Think about how your agency can give individuals the chance to shine and remember that conflicts of opinion spark creativity, he writes.

Industry trade groups and pharmaceutical companies largely are in agreement that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) does not have the statutory authority to require that drug companies include the wholesale acquisition cost of a drug in direct-to-consumer television ads. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) states in its comment on the recent CMS proposed rule that the agency is mixing and matching parts of the Social Security Act, "combining 'ends' from one provision with 'means' from others -- essentially creating a new statute -- and then proposes to issue regulations 'implementing' the new statute." Industry commenters also contend that the proposal would confuse consumers and raises significant First Amendment concerns. Read more.