MedNet.com case

1. If Internet media is so measurable, how can Heather Yates and Bill Bishop be in such a predicament?

Though the numbers of click-through can be a way to measure the effects of advertising, there’re still other factors and reasons about the revenue from online advertisements. MedNet is a website that provides based medical information free, and most of the audiences turn to MedNet when they’re in crisis, like feeling uncomfortable or sick from diseases. And MedNet mainly generates its profit from advertising sales. Marvel, which is an online search engine, has a lot of visitors who behave in a predictable pattern.

As the website traffic indicators, CPM and CTR just represent how many people went through the website and click the advertisements and contexts fit their interest or need. Both of they are not enough to be evaluation methods of revenue. Maybe they need to put attention on cost and other factors. There’re not only click-through that is relevant to the profit issue, also a lot of other related factors like how to evaluate real performance from those click numbers.

2. What does an advertiser want? Sales leads, brand awareness? What are the best metrics for measuring these?

According to this case, sales number seems more attractive than brand awareness for a practical advertiser. The reason why Windham considered shifting its MedNet ad dollars to Marvel could be a good example to explain this condition. In view of preferring “sales leads”, advertisers would like to ask sites to charge only for click-through instead of cost-per-thousand impression (CPM) which is the metrics for measuring effectiveness of brand awareness. As a matter of this, the key metrics for measuring“sales”is the click-through-rate (CTR), measured as the number of clicks divided by the number of ad impressions delivered. To sum up, advertisers always considered website click-throughs to be the equivalent of customers interested in potentially making a purchase.

3. What specific consumer behaviors determine whether or not a business model produces the results an advertiser wants?

In this case, the target consumers are those who are interested in medical issue. They may browse websites to get the information they need by search some issues on the search engine or on a specific medical website such as “MedNet.com.” We can divided consumers into two groups, the first group includes consumers that are actually looking for some medicines which would cure their illness. When they are searching on internet, they may click on the advertisement related to what they are searching for. The company who advertised may get some profit from this kind of behavior of consumers. Another group of customers are those brows websites not for a specific reason; they may interest in some medical issue but may not in an urgent circumstances. For them, they may be caught by those advertisement on the websites and have some impression on the brand, next time when they are really searching for something, they may choose the brand for a try.

MedNet.com provides a professional, trustworthy and promptly brand image for customers and their customer are more like the group one we discussed above, which is more in urgent, more loyalty to websites. Based on the reasons, MedNet.com choose a business model which is (1) free of charge to consumers for medical-related information (2) charge fees for advertisement (3) charge by CPM (4) monitoring their eyeballs at anytime.

As to Marvel, they provides general information and search functions for customers, their browsers will use Marvel to get some websites that provide more detail or specific information. The business model for Marvel is (1) charge by CPC/CTR (2) alternative advertising model.

For Cholesterol.com, they provides interactive platform and specific illness information for consumers, their target customers are those who have strong knowledge of this disease and are seeking for some professional help. The business model for Cholesterol.com is (1) personal consulting service (2) international therapy tour (3) high-focused audiences.

4. What steps can MedNet take to address emerging competitive threats?

MedNet has two main competitiors:one is Marvel,the search engine, the other

is condition-specific sites those who focused on particular problems, such as Cholesterol.com.

Facing those competitions, we think MedNet could take the following steps:

1) The goals of MedNet is to provide free health-related knowledge, and to

stick with this goal,they should keep providing professional information or

team up with more medical authority to attract more consumers in order to

attract more advertisers.

2) To compete with Cholesterol.com,"customization" is one way MedNet could

take.Since it is importance to fulfill consumers' needs, Mednet could provide

more personal information service,like individual health recommendation or

provide Q&A service that visitors can ask their own question without telling

their private information.In this way,MedNet could get more attractions from

visitors who are the target audience of MedNet's advertisers and increase

their loyalty.