French philosopher Voltaire said the art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures their disease. If that’s the case, health websites are certainly doing a good job of distraction.
It seems a growing number of Australians are taking to the idea of looking after their wellbeing through the internet and according to Nielson NetRatings, 1.6 million Australians visited a health website in April 2005.
NineMSN’s health portal is one of the most popular, receiving almost two million page impressions in the month of March and an average 300,000 unique visitors. Internet statisticians Hitwise ranked it third in the health and medical category for month of May—with a 1.59% share of the total number of visits to all sites in the category.
Able to leverage content from its health brands such as the Good Medicine magazine, Ninemsn is giving users a healthy dose of fact sheets, recipes and interactive tools to meet the constantly growing demand for health content online.
Ninemsn director of news and content Jane O’Connell says the privacy and immediacy of the internet offers the perfect fit for health.
“What is attractive about online health sites is that you can put personal information into interactive tools like calorie counters and it gives you results directly relating to you and what you’re trying to achieve,” O’Connell says.
She reports the words ‘pregnancy’, ‘diet’ and ‘fitness’ have been the top health searches by visitors to the Ninemsn website.
“In the past 12 months we’ve seen tremendous growth in health so we’re constantly looking at search results to make sure that information is available,” she says.
And Ninemsn is seeking to introduce further interactivity to its health offering.
“We’re looking at expanding personalised health content, asking users to share their stories about a condition, an operation or alternative medicine,”O’Connell explains.
“People can also submit questions which will be answered by experts.
“Having that presence with magazines and on television, and being able to extend that interaction online, clearly has us at an advantage.”
Hitwise spokesman James Borg says there has been an increase in Australian visits to wellbeing websites since January 2004. Of the Top 20 health and medical websites visited in the last week of May, eight of them were commercial—offering advertising opportunities for brands chasing eyeballs.
One of them was mydr.com.au, launched five years ago by the MIMS Consumer Health Group—which publishes medical product information—as a value-added service for doctors.
“Because health professionals had an issue with where do Australian consumers go to access reliable, credible health information, it seemed a logical extension to take the MIMS brand name out to consumers,” Mydr’s GM, Siobhan Murphy, says.
Mydr.com.au had 155,000 unique visitors to the site in the month of March, with users spending an average 10 minutes per session.
The site refreshes its homepage content weekly, thanks to a dedicated content team of medical editors.
“People like the site because the content changes every week and we keep on the pulse of health topics. We find a lot of interest in the interactive tools like the quizzes,” she says.
Murphy believes advertisers are increasingly using health content for branding purposes as a reflection of the growing interest in healthy living.
“Health is the one great leveller. It’s an interest category to all of us. We now consult with health brands to customise and license content,” Murphy says.
“We’re finding that marketers are being more strategic about how they use the internet.”
AMA president, Dr Mukesh Haikerwal, frequently refers patients to medical sites like Mydr.com.au as well as high-traffic government health sites, which he believes are more respectable than the search results in Google.
He thinks that while more patients are coming to doctors with web information, the internet is unlikely to replace doctors.
“There’s a concern with trying to diagnose off the internet. Even if sites are credible, you might have the wrong end of the stick in trying to match symptoms to a disease,” Dr Haikerwal says.
“You can use the internet for information and behaviour management but you can’t actually diagnose. Medicine is about talking, looking, feeling—they’re things you can’t get over the internet.”
The AMA is only aware of one Australian clinic which has set up paid, over-the-net consultations, and advises potential ‘e-Health’ businesses to maintain secure systems and indemnity insurance.
“When you’re buying drugs off the Internet you don’t have the back up of your pharmacist,” Dr Haikerwal explains.
Partner at URSA, Richard Wylie, an agency that specialises in pharmaceutical advertising, says the web is helping the medical fraternity through disease awareness advertising.
“The websites are an important marshalling point for interested patients. They can take their time to gather information, and following that they’re much more likely to go and take action,”Wylie says.
Martin Hoegh-Guldberg of Suede—URSA’s digital partner—says health brands have been groundbreaking with new media because of advertising restrictions placed on them.
“The healthcare segment is generally more innovative because The Medical Code of Practice is so tight. They’re keen to leverage the online space,”Hoegh-Guldberg says.
Suede launched a dedicated website—www.theweekend.com—about erectile dysfunction.
The online offering is part of an integrated campaign for Eli Lilly, which Hoegh-Guldberg says showcases the internet’s suitability for dealing with sensitive health topics.
Weight-loss drug Xenical has also recently launched a website as part of its new patient support program.
“It’s about giving a rich support environment via the web, with giveaways or meal ideas to support a patient’s weight-loss journey and extending the amount of time they spend on treatment,” Hoegh-Guldberg says.
“Because they can’t mention their name out in the marketplace, they have to give people things that are really useful.”
Wylie predicts advertising growth on independent health portals like Ninemsn and Mydr.com.au, as health brands look to reach mass market audiences online.
“Increasingly with direct-to-consumer advertising we’re looking for a return on investment and those sites are cost-effective and do give you the opportunity to track,” he says.
Ninemsn’s director of ad products, Dominic Finnigan, says that 83% of its health portal’s audience are primary grocery buyers, which has attracted advertising from FMCG brands like Nestlé and Kellogg and finance groups like Esanda.
“These people are much more likely to be between 25-49, which is the advertiser sweet spot. And you can reach them during the day, especially around lunchtime, so we like to think of it as daytime as primetime,” Finnigan says.
According to Finnigan, despite online claiming 14% of media time, it is still only attracting 4% of the media spend, which he believes is slowly changing.
“There’s obviously a clear disconnect. But it’s a positive sign with the calibre of brands coming online,”he says.
“It’s a great example of media planners and advertisers getting the message that online really works.”
By tailoring the advertisment and considering its placement, product marketers are able to effectively reach their target market through the internet.
“Kellogg wanted to reach its audience at lots of different points so by strongly relating itself to health-related content it plants the seed that Kellogg has products that will help you with your general health,” Finnigan says.
