The incidence of co-promotion components in licensing deals for development-stage pharmaceutical products has grown steadily since 1996, according to data from PharmaDeals v4. In 1996, just 6% of licensing deals retained co-promotion rights or options for the licensors, whereas in 2010 so far, the frequency is double that at 12%. The most common motivation for a commercially established company to enter into co-promotion deals is to add complementary marketing capabilities to achieve greater market penetration, whereas ambitious smaller companies are typically seeking to become commercially established, particularly in their local market and also often in the high-value United States market.

Analysing the outcome of 46 co-promotion deals agreed at the Phase I or Phase II stage in the 2000 to 2006 time period identified five drug candidates that had reached commercialization and three that had triggered the co-promotion. One of these (ProStrakan–Orexo, for Rapinyl) subsequently converted to a joint venture, leaving one deal between two large pharmaceutical companies (Abbott–Eisai, for Humira) and one between a small company and a large pharmaceutical company (Onyx–Bayer, for Nexavar).

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