Add one more popular face to the growing universe of superheroes on TV and streaming services and in film. Megan Fox, the well-known actress and model, has a starring role in a new ad campaign from telehealth company Ro and her mission, done while donning a skintight red suit and portraying herself as the human embodiment of erectile-dysfunction product Ro Sparks, is to get people to talk about the problem and seek help to remedy it. There are few nuances to Fox’s appearance and what it’s meant to inspire, and the new ad shows just how more direct pharmaceutical advertisers have become when tackling conditions that be embarrassing or sensitive.
In a different era, TV networks were squeamish about putting ads for female arousal oil in primetime. Now many of them run commercials for razor blades and shavers meant to groom body areas that aren’t typically mentioned on air. The new Ro ads teeter between cheeky and lascivious.
Ro has reason to entice consumers. The global telehealth market was valued at $77.4 billion in 2025, according to Grand View Research, and is projected to grow from $87.7 billion in 2026 to $187.5 billion by 2033. Other telehealth providers have emerged, including Hims & Hers.
In a nod to how aggressive various entrants in the category have become, both Ro and Hims & Hers ran commercials in the most recent Super Bowl. Ads for erectile-dysfunction drugs were less direct when the market for the product launched in the late 1990s. Pfizer, which made Viagra, enlisted former Senator Bob Dole as a pitchman in ads.
He told viewers how he suffered from ED following treatment for prostate cancer. Others took a more elliptical approach. When Lilly introduced Cialis in 2003, it brandished an image of a couple sitting side by side in separate bathtubs, hoping to inspire thoughts of romance, GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer tapped an actress, Marie Silvia, to tell TV viewers about how her significant other – “my man,” she called him in the ads – took the medicine.
Ro is simply using techniques that have worked in the past, says Rahmanian, the executive. Having a woman on screen discussing solutions for erectile dysfunction is “very intentional,” he says. But what we have learned is that men really lean in when this topic is brought up from the woman’s perspective.
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