THIS IS THE CASE STUDY OF HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PRESENTATION ON"MedNet.com confronts click through competition" FRAMED BY MADHUSUDAN DAHAL(NIT SURAT)

1. What is Med Net?
It is a website delivering health information free to
consumers

2. Main motto of launching MedNet are:
1.To provide scientific based medicine information to a non
professional consumer audience

3. Objective contd..
2.To provide this information for free
3.To generate profits from advertising sales

4. What is its source to run?
Gets income via advertising from pharmaceutical
companies.

5. What is windham?
Biggest advertiser for MedNet
Pharmaceutical firm

6. 1.Who is Heather Yates?
2.Who is Bill Bishop?
3.Who is Mahria Baker?
“Real players”

7. Heather Yates is the vice president for business
development at MedNet
Bill Bishop is MedNet’s vice president of consumer
marketing

8. Mahria Baker =windham’s ceo

9. Marvel is a large search engine which follows the
alternating advertising model

10. Alternating advertising
model includes:
Contextual , pay per click, banner
advertising

11. It depend on “click through rate”=(no. of
click) /(no of impression delivered)

12. What is the present situation?

13. Analysis :1
a)Mahir Baker planning to shift ad dollars to Marvel because
Marvel advertisement value becomes lesser for windham

14. b)MedNet has to convince them that MedNet set up is
worth their ad dollars
It is because windham is biggest advertiser for MedNet .If

15. Let’s look at MedNet’s background
In 2006 it earned profit to $1million
The credits goes to trained doctors ,journalists ,designers ,

16. Revenue
Advertising income
$ 12000,000
Expenses
Purchased content 3700,000
Sales and marketing 3000,000
Technology support 1300,000
General administration 3000,000
Net income =$1000,000
Total= 11000,000

17. Maximum r
In 2006,Maximum expense was from
purchase content
Net profit was one million dollar

18. But ,

19. Faced tough competition
By providing similar content on mainstream medicine
,non profit & governmental competed with MedNet

20. Resulted ..
Divergent on customers
Company’s economy declined

21. Condition specific sites gave birth such as
cholesterol.com could focus on cholesterol but was
minor competitor for MedNet

22. yates found clinicaltrial.com audience was small but was
minor competitor
Alternativehealth.com provided information regarding herbal
remedies ,vitamin regimens , massage

23. Alternativehealth.com audience was greater
than MedNet but it had begun to use
disclaimers with no impact on audience size
That’s why it could not compete with MedNet but had to
consider as minor competitor

25. Advertising revenue model was
possible by sophisticated web
analytics:
A technology that tracks the
behavior of each visitor-pages
viewed , linked clicked etc

26. Software made easy to calculate
Return on Advertisement
investment(ROI)

27. Old methods :
Analysis 02

28. MedNet charged windham pharmaceutical on
cost per thousand impression (CPM) basis
One advertising impression meant that one visitor
requested from a web server a page that had specific
advertisement on it

30. Analyse 03
What can be the Marvel
challenge?

31. 1.Was to control click fraud as competitors were
fraudulently clicking on advertisements to drive up
advertising cost.
2.To capture MedNet customers gradually by
offering different offers

32. Analysis 03
Challenge for
MedNet to sustain
Challenge 1:windham pays $0.54 for each click through
to marvel
Windham pays $3.33 for each click through to MedNet

33. Now which strategy will MedNEt be
following ?
How can it protect from going
into loss?
Click through really what matters at
Windham.

34. Baker is in commotion- but cant pay six times as
that of paying to marvel?
Baker’s investment is constant

36. Windham pharmaceutical advertising campaign results
Advertising venue
Marvil search
U.S newspaper
Monthly visitors
MedNet 4.3mm/month
19mm/month
2.5mm/day
Impressions
Windham received
17.2mm
57 mm
5mm
cost
$100cpm
$.54 per click- through
$260000/2-day ad
MedNet only came in crisis
season
Exhibit 02

37. Exhibit 03
MedNet visitors survey results:
Did you click on a sponsor’s advertisement today?
3% yes
For those who click on sponsor advertisement ,did you make a
purchase?
6% yes
Have you clicked on a health advertisements on search engine website?
1.4% yes

38. Contd..
For those who clicked on heath advertisement
website , did you make a purchase?
2% yes
If you saw advertisement on television or newspaper ,
would you call the call center?
.74 % yes
If you called about an advertisement on newspaper or television and
found the information credible ,would you make a purchase?
12% yes

39. Contd..
Advertisers at MedNet are more likely to provide me with useful remedies and
information than the advertisers found on website that don’t adhere to the same
evidence based standards
Strongly agreed 85%
Strongly disagree 15%
How many health sites will you visit to research condition?
85%=3 or more
How did you decide to go online to find health information on MedNet?

40. Contd..
25% search engine
10% advertisement print
25% online advertisement
20% bokmark this site
10% trusted advisor recommendation
10% email letter from friend
recommending article

41. Contd..
Will you return to MedNet next time you
need medical information?
93% yes
7% no
Will you allow midNet to
store your personal
information about your
condition such as blood
pressure , weight etc?
40% yes
60% no
Would you pay for the
content at MedNet site?
75% no

42. Contd..
Would you use MedNet if you have to register for
some information?
50% no
Conclusions:
MedNet visitors clicked on more pages and
advertisements than general web surfer does

43. Which types of website does visitor
visit from MedNET?
• FOR THAT ONE MUST LOOK UPON EXHIBIT -4
Advertisement placement
General interest website
Estimated contribution per sale
$48
Search engine $45
Health care website $150
newspaper $165
Television $75

44. Conclusion of exhibit -4
Health website visitors tend to buy more products from advertisers when they
did decide to purchase.
If product advertised is not available on counter they can go to doctor for
prescribtion

45. What is vesselie ? and did coupons
selling become effective for
windham?
Vesselia is the prescription medication that cures
cholesterol and plaque

46. In order to increase prescription of vesselia
windham generated coupons on website so that
they could print out and redeem at pharmacy
On average patient took three months to redeem coupons for
vesselia after windam had first placed the advertisement

47. Analysis 04
Windham only pay for click through???
If audience remains constant and provided that MedNet sells
only by click through then MedNets gets its revenue
depreciated by 80%

48. What if
audience
is
increased
and click
through
also gets
increased
???
Or should they focus on practices like chiropractic
medicine or acupuncture ??

49. But alternative health audience don’t like western
medicine or say pharmaceutical companies?

50. What about instead of selling click through MedNet contract
with large employee to become corporate health site of
record?

51. But ,One worry
!!!
Baker
underestimate
s the genuine
value that
MedNet
impression
deliver to an
advertiser

52. The only way to win this arguments is with numbers
not intuition
Lets compare numbers that MedNet generates on an
impression basis with the number that Marvel generates

53. Insights taken from telephone conversations
Proposal : 01
Marvel has
provided through
click through but
those are just
opportunities to
get windham in
front of person
“not actual sales”
What click through worth if it

54. When all vesselia coupon gets returned to windham then
Windham will realised what MedNet delivered the best
sale result
But how can windham make profits from heart
medication profit margin??

55. If Windham want people to click on their
ads at low rate Marvel ca give that
But !!!
If Windham want people to see at content and
consider their message Windham want MedNet

56. Analysis 05
Since budget is constant , windham has to pay for ads on
cholesterol.com.if it does not pay its competitor will gets its
consumer .so what to do in such condition?

57. How to sell vesselie in a ways that
cholesterol.com cannot ??
Bakers analogy
Both MedNet and cholesterol.com had targeted high profit
audience that returned for up to date and trustworthy
solution about cholesterol medication

58. Cholesterol.com
is category killer
Focuses on chronic
condition such as
cardiovascular disease
,obesity
Cholesterol.co
m was
launched by
lawyer
with$47
This sites recruited
international
doctors and
designer .they
could make
information in 13
language including
chinese

59. Cholesterol.com was
powerhouse in Asia
Could offer travel
agencies to
promote Global
Health Tourism
Site significant
marketing budget paid
for a large ,multilingual
advertisement
campaign

60. What MedNet could do when niche’s
competitor was existing in market??
MedNet continued
to believe that
providing source of
information that
could deliver real
value to its reader

61. Mednet perceived that
some condition specific
sites came dangerously
close to diagnosing
condition and prescribing
treatment for visitors
Were at risk of
violating both state
and federal
government rules
So mednet
refused to
provide medical
treatment

62. Insights from conference call
Treating visitors as patient as that of
cholesterol.com did can reduce the
dependency on advertising revenue

63. But would Mednet board stand for aggressive
approach to dispensing medical information??
Bringing alternative health information(like acupuncture) to
the site ,can it be fruitful?

64. But would this help the problems of
flattening advertising revenue
pharmaceutical firms like Windham??
But main thing is to
develop healthy
relationship ,
trustworthiness among
users.

65. At last ..think on it
Would employers let them introduce pharmaceutical
advertising ?

66. This presentation is framed by Madhusudan Dahal under
the guidence of prof. Sameer Mathur(iiminternship.com)

67. Sameer Mathur
MBASkills.in
Indian institute of
Management Lucknow
Marketing professor 2013-
Marketing professor 2009-13
Ph.D and MS(marketing)2003-
2009
Madhusudan Dahal
National Institute of Technology surat
intern