This document summarizes a case study about MedNet.com facing increased competition from Marvel, which charges advertisers based on click-throughs rather than impressions. MedNet.com's executives Heather Yates and Bill Bishop discuss options to increase revenue like expanding content or charging for information. They try to convince Mahira Baker from Windham Pharmaceuticals that MedNet.com provides higher value by demonstrating superior conversion rates. However, Baker notes Cholesterol.com also performs well. The team considers specializing in specific health domains, becoming an enterprise wellness site, or adding alternative health content with disclaimers.

1. Click-through competition
Case study analysis on MedNet.com

2. What is the
case study
all about?

4. Who all are the characters involved in the
case study?

5. Heather Yates-Vice President for Business
development at MedNet.com
Bill Bishop-Vice President of Consumer
Marketing at MedNet.com
Bradley Meyers-Chief Financial Officer at
MedNet.com
Mahira Baker- Chief Marketing Officer at
Windham Pharmaceuticals

6. Some basic terms used in the case study
that we need to get familiar with!

7. Some basic terms used in the case study
that we need to get familiar with!

8. Some basic terms used in the case study
that we need to get familiar with!

9. Some basic terms used in the case study
that we need to get familiar with!

10. Analyzing MedNet.com’s
company profile: its goals,
team, awards and honors
received, pricing policy and
income statement. Also we
need evaluate its greatest
strengths and weaknesses

11. MedNet.com’s
Goals

12. • To provide
scientifically based
medical information
to a non-professional
consumer audience
MedNet.com’s
Goals

13. • To provide this
information for free
MedNet.com’s
Goals

14. • To generate profits
from advertising
sales
MedNet.com’s
Goals

16. Awards and Honors

17. MedNet.com does its pricing
on CPM basis. It charges
$100 per 1000 impressions.

18. Strengths Weaknesses

19. Strengths Weaknesses

20. Strengths Weaknesses

21. Strengths Weaknesses

22. Strengths Weaknesses

23. MedNet.com’s Income
Statement
 Revenue

24. • Analysis report of the advertising campaign
MedNet.com’s
Competitors

25. Nonprofit and governmental
organizations like
U.S National Library of
Medicine and W.H.O provided
with more comprehensive
information though they were
not easy to navigate.
Unlike MedNet.com, they
provided information on
scientifically based solutions and
alternative therapies with
disclaimers

26. A profit based and
condition specific
website, cholesterol.com
poses financial threat to
MedNet.com’s
advertising revenue and
audience.
An indirect
competitor
clinictrials.com is
taking away a portion
of MedNet.com’s
advertising business.

27. alternativehealth.com
competes with
MedNet.com through
unproven theories and
procedures such as
herbal remedies and
massage. It has larger
audience base as
compared to
MedNet.com and its
advertising sales are
more robust

28. • Marvel biggest competitor
MedNet.com’s biggest
competitor:
Marvel

29. Comparative analysis of advertising cost
through various advertising mediums
Cost per click through

30. Analyzing the Marvel’s threat
1
• MedNet.com charged its advertisers for impressions on its webpages while
Marvel provides impressions for free. It only charges for the click-through
on the advertisements.
2
3

31. Analyzing the Marvel’s threat
1
2
• If MedNet.com follows Marvel’s policy it will suffer a loss in its revenues by
over 80 percent
3

32. Analyzing the Marvel’s threat
1
2
3
• Yates and Bill try to evaluate other options to keep up with their revenues.

33. They come up with
three options for
increasing revenues

34. They come up with
three options for
increasing revenues
Increase the size of its
audience by covering
alternative healing
approaches

35. They come up with
three options for
increasing revenues
Contract with large
employers to become
a corporate health
site of record

36. They come up with
three options for
increasing revenues
Start charging visitors
for providing
information on the
website.

37. Increase the size of its
audience by covering
alternative healing
approaches
Problem: Alternative
health audience
won’t click on ads of
pharmaceutical
companies
They come up with
three options for
increasing revenues

38. Contract with large
employers to become
a corporate health
site of record
Problem: MedNet.com
would be defamed as
morphing from
information content
business to human
resource service provider
for hire
They come up with
three options for
increasing revenues

39. Start charging visitors
for providing
information on the
website.
Problem: There will
be significant
reduction in the
number of visitors on
the MedNet.com’s
Website
They come up with
three options for
increasing revenues

40. Analyzing the Marvel’s threat
4
• All the options are scraped and a new short-term solution needs to be
sought.
5
6

41. Analyzing the Marvel’s threat
4
5
• Yates and Bill need to convince Baker over the fact that the
services MedNet.com provides has more value attached to it.
6

42. MedNet.com’s V/S Marvel’s
 Ads appearing on MedNet.com’s page are
considered much more trusted by audience
over Marvel’s

43. MedNet.com’s V/S Marvel’s
 Marvel’s audience is not lucrative enough as
compared to MedNet.com

44. MedNet.com’s V/S Marvel’s
 MedNet.com’s higher advertising charges over
Marvel can be attributed to the fact that
conversion rate of audience watching ads to
actually buying products was more in
MedNet.com.

45. Survey results to
support their
statements

46. MedNet.com’s V/S Marvel’s
 Windham Pharmaceuticals had launched a
product Vesselia and it provided promo codes
to customers which they can use to redeem
offers while purchasing it. They used this to
attribute drug sales to relevant advertising
venues.

47. MedNet.com’s V/S Marvel’s
 Yates was sure that they had a better
conversion rate and thus, offered the incentive
of not billing Windham until the reports of the
campaign arrived.

48. Analyzing the Marvel’s threat
4
5
6
• An attempt is made to convey these facts to Baker and postponing the
billing process to support their facts

49. Baker finally seems quite
convinced from the facts
as communicated by Yates
and Bill.

50. However, a new challenge
comes up. Both MedNet.com
and Cholesterol.com bring
nearly equal margins of profits
to Windham Pharmaceuticals.
Baker wonders why she should
not shift to cholesterol.com and
what advantage they have
from MedNet.com over
Cholesterol.com

51. Analysis of performance of various
marketing channels in prescription of
Heart Medication

52. The entire MedNet.com
team is in the dilemma of
selecting best alternative
keeping in mind the best
growth of the company.

53. Fundamental problems faced by MedNet.com

54. Fundamental problems faced by MedNet.com
1) Impression to conversion ratio needs
to balance the advertising budgets of
advertising companies

55. Fundamental problems faced by MedNet.com
2) Competition from condition specific
websites

56. Fundamental problems faced by MedNet.com
3) Competition from indirect players

57. Fundamental problems faced by MedNet.com
4) Competition from governmental
websites

58. Three proposed ALTERNATIVES to be taken into
consideration

59. Three proposed ALTERNATIVES to be taken into
consideration
1) Shifting to employee enterprise businesses

60. Three proposed ALTERNATIVES to be taken into
consideration
2) Gaining specialization in a particular domain (Heart/Brain
etc.) and charge visitors for the content on the website

61. Three proposed ALTERNATIVES to be taken into
consideration
3) Incorporating alternative health medication content

62. Alternative 1. Shifting to Employee Enterprise
Business

63. Alternative 1. Shifting to Employee Enterprise
Business
Though the field may align with the company’s core
competency, the company will have to enter into a
totally new market

64. Alternative 1. Shifting to Employee Enterprise
Business
Brand repositioning , entering and establishing itself
in an entirely new market will require large inputs of
money and other resources

65. Alternative 1. Shifting to Employee Enterprise
Business
Further, it will invoke learning curve costs for gaining
expertise to compete with market leaders

66. Alternative 1. Shifting to Employee Enterprise
Business
New organizational structures needs to be developed,
new objectives and company policies needs to be
devised

67. Alternative 1. Shifting to Employee Enterprise
Business
The primary concern of cut throat competitions and
uncertainties will still exist

68. Alternative 2. Gaining specialization in a particular
domain

69. Alternative 2. Gaining specialization in a particular
domain
Regulatory issues, gaining medical certification and
approvals will lead to many inconveniences

70. Alternative 2. Gaining specialization in a particular
domain
Also threats for lawsuits of various kinds for giving
unauthorized consultation can be a risk

71. Alternative 2. Gaining specialization in a particular
domain
Selecting a particular domain (Heart/Brain etc.)
and tailoring the company again for that kind of
health space, structuring organization and brand
repositioning will require large inputs of money
and other resources

72. Alternative 2. Gaining specialization in a particular
domain
Competing with already established players in that
domain and gaining expertise will require time
and great efforts

73. Alternative 2. Gaining specialization in a particular
domain
Audience base will shrink in size and will be
restricted to that particular domain, further drop
will be triggered due to charging of fees for
providing information content. Thus advertising
opportunities will further degrade due to reduced
audience base.

74. Alternative 2. Gaining specialization in a particular
domain
Brand repositioning shift can cause chaos among
the audience as they wont be able to relate the
moves of the company with their primary
offerings and value proposition (for what they are
known for)

75. Alternative 2. Gaining specialization in a particular
domain
Competition will get tougher with head to head
knockout from websites like cholesterol.com which
are both established and experts

76. Alternative 3. Incorporating alternative health
content

77. Alternative 3. Incorporating alternative health
content
Slight modifications can be made in the website
by incorporating a new tab for alternative
health content

78. Alternative 3. Incorporating alternative health
content
Interested visitors will divert accordingly

79. Alternative 3. Incorporating alternative health
content
Existing visitors won’t leave, as this is just an
expansion into a new adjacency retaining their
flagship product alive and undiluted

80. Alternative 3. Incorporating alternative health
content
Disclaimers on alternative health options will
help MedNet.com retain its authenticity

81. Alternative 3. Incorporating alternative health
content
Advertisements of all pre-existing
pharmaceutical clients can be placed in all other
tabs except alternative health

82. Alternative 3. Incorporating alternative health
content
Infact, due to MedNet.com being a brand and
market leader in providing free authentic and
highly reliable information, new audience base
will add up to the pre-existing ones, who are
more interested in alternative medications and
will shift from alternativehealth.com due to
higher reliability

83. Alternative 3. Incorporating alternative health
content
Visitors will get information on both kind of
domains under a common roof.

84. Alternative 3. Incorporating alternative health
content
Gradual movements of visitors in both domains
will help them explore more and will mutually
benefit both types of customer companies as both
will get access to new market segments

85. Thus movement to incorporate
alternative health medication
information can work in
company’s favor and is a well
calculated and balanced
recommendation.

86. Thank you
This presentation was created by
Ashutosh Shukla, IIT Roorkee
during an internship under
Prof. Sameer Mathur
IIM Lucknow