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Archive for the ‘HealthCentral Network’ Category

Healthline’s Semantic Ad Network for Health Content

• Posted June 9th 2008
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• by Janice

Healthline, announced today its entry into the vertical ad network business with its healthcare-focused media network called HealthSTAT™ On-Demand.  HealthSTAT is a welcome addition for medical and healthcare publishers that need new options for revenue generation beyond AdSense and the other general search engine ad networks.  HealthSTAT joins other recent entries in the healthcare ad network space, including IAC/The Health Central Network and Glam Media. Healthline’s initial group of publishing partners includes some trusted traditional brand names and some new entrants (AARP, USNews.com, Time Inc.’s new Health.com, PracticeFusion, Elder.com, HealthPricer, and JustAnswer), as well as its own Healthline.com portal and a new consumer health portal to be launched by United Health later this year, MyOptumHealth. 

We’ve noted before that online health sites that rely primarily on pharma advertising revenue are showing slow and disappointing results. It’s time to think beyond the pharma companies as the only source of ad dollars for consumer health sites.  What impresses me about Healthline (an InfoCommerce 2006 winner), is its understanding of sponsorship opportunities. Its recent deal with Aetna and the signing of United Health in this new ad network show that Healthline recognizes insurers are good publishing partners.  It is important to note that these same insurers should be good prospects as advertisers on the HealthSTAT ad network, too. 

There will undoubtedly be more entrants in the healthcare vertical ad network market. Healthline, with its much-touted medical taxonomy, has built a good technical foundation on which to build its ad network.  But it’s Healthline’s demonstrated ability to form partnerships with important stakeholders that puts it ahead of competitors.

 

Vertical Ad Networks Still in Experimental Phase

• Posted April 17th 2008
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• by Janice

The Health Central Network (THCN) and IAC’s Advertising Sales (IAC/AS) group announced the launch of a new health advertising network this week. THCN owns and operates a collection of healthcare-focused websites, with a core collection of disease-specific sites such as My Migraine Connection and My Allergy Network, which were either acquired or built. Owning the sites gives THCN the ability to impose common standards, tools, and interoperability among the sites and unites them under a single strong brand that appeals to advertisers that want to reach consumers who are seeking information about disease management and healthcare.

Health Central’s new agreement with IAC/AS now provides them with a strong vertical ad network in addition to substantial ad sales resources for serving the pharmaceutical industry. Furthermore, the relationship between IAC and THCN goes well beyond this cooperative ad network. IAC made a significant minority investment in THCN in January, which PaidContent.org has reported at $50 million.

Glam Media competes with THCN/IAC for the same pharmaceutical and health-related consumer product ad dollars, but with a different vertical ad network model. Glam, which raised an additional $85 million in February, has also assembled a substantial collection of related websites that in the aggregate attract tens of millions of visitors per month.  While THCN’s content is medically-focused, Glam’s network of sites is weighted more toward entertainment and lifestyle. But the key difference is that Glam does not own or operate most of the sites in their network. Instead they offer a range of advertising and marketing services to the affiliated publishers.

As the Web develops into a more mainstream advertising and marketing medium, both of these experiments bear watching. Advertisers and marketers will likely try out both, and success will go to whichever produces the best results.

 

Consumer Health Sites Not for the Faint of Heart

• Posted March 21st 2008
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• by Janice

Steve Case, the keynote speaker at yesterday’s EconHealth seminar, and CEO of Revolution Health, used the phrase “not for the faint of heart” to describe the current environment for producing healthcare content for the consumer market. Chris Schroeder, CEO of the HealthCentral Network, repeated the phrase in the introduction to his opening panel. It’s an apt way of summing up the themes of the seminar that focused on the money flow in early-stage digital consumer health companies.

Case used the analogy of his experience getting consumers engaged in online communication at AOL and predicted that the time horizon spans 10 to 20 years before the full “sea change” occurs in the healthcare sector. Significant additional hurdles exist in the health market, which has a complex institutional structure with layers of agents that constrain consumer choice and behavior. The agents include employers who remain the primary payers of health insurance, the health insurance companies as payer-intermediaries between consumers and providers, and government agencies that create policy and regulations—and are also a major payer of healthcare services. Layers of constraints also exist for the physicians and other healthcare professionals who offer health services.

Still, Steve and other speakers did not present a gloomy future for health content start-ups and established healthcare publishers. There is overwhelming agreement that the US is moving toward a consumer-centric healthcare system and there are ample opportunities for companies that create innovative applications to improve the efficiency of healthcare consumption. But the timing of adoption by consumers is very difficult to predict, especially in an environment of constrained choice. Deep pockets help. And, it helps to have alternative sources of revenue to keep afloat while the “tectonic shifts” in healthcare settle. Without significant resources, the most likely future for most of today’s consumer health start-ups will be acquisition by a large more diversified health content or health IT company.