Harvard Business case third(MedNet.com confronts "click through" competition)

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Transcript of Harvard Business case third(MedNet.com confronts "click through" competition)

What is Med Net?

It is a website delivering health information free to consumers

Main motto of launching MedNet are:

1.To provide scientific based medicine information to a non professional consumer audience

Objective contd..

2.To provide this information for free

3.To generate profits from advertising sales

What is its source to run?

Gets income via advertising from pharmaceutical companies.

What is windham?

Biggest advertiser for MedNet

Pharmaceutical firm

1.Who is Heather Yates?

2.Who is Bill Bishop?

3.Who is Mahria Baker?

“Real players”

Heather Yates is the vice president for business development at MedNet

Bill Bishop is MedNet’s vice president of consumer marketing

Mahria Baker =windham’s ceo

What is marvel?

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

Alternating advertising model includes:

Contextual , pay per click, banner advertising

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

What is the present situation?

Analysis :1

a)Mahir Baker planning to shift ad dollars to Marvel because Marvel advertisement value becomes lesser for windham

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 they break up with them then they will be in loss

Let’s look at MedNet’s background

In 2006 it earned profit to $1million

The credits goes to trained doctors ,journalists ,designers , administrators &social media even

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

Maximum r

In 2006,Maximum expense was from purchase content

Net profit was one million dollar

What happened in 2007?

But ,

Faced tough competition

By providing similar content on mainstream medicine ,non profit & governmental competed with MedNet

Resulted ..

Divergent on customersCompany’s economy declined

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

yates found clinicaltrial.com audience was small but was minor competitor

Alternativehealth.com provided information regarding herbal remedies ,vitamin regimens , massage

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

What method is used to calculate

advertiser payments?

Advertising revenue model was possible by sophisticated web analytics:

A technology that tracks the behavior of each visitor-pages viewed , linked clicked etc

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

Old methods :

How best to generate revenue from adverti sers?

Analysis 02

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

By imposing an impression

business model MedNet was fully

monetizing

Analyse 03

What can be the Marvel challenge?

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

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

Now which strategy will MedNEt be following ?

How can it protect from going into loss?

Click through really what matters at Windham.

Baker is in commotion- but cant pay six times as that of paying to marvel?

Baker’s investment is constant

Yes!!! It was necessary to think it upon Windham’s

advertising campaign results

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

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

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

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?

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

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% yes60% no

Would you pay for the content at MedNet site?75% no

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

Which types of website does visitor visit from MedNET?

• FOR THAT ONE MUST LOOK UPON EXHIBIT -4Advertisement placement

General interest website

Estimated contribution per sale

$48

Search engine $45

Health care website $150

newspaper $165

Television $75

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

What is vesselie ? and did coupons selling become effective for windham?

Vesselia is the prescription medication that cures cholesterol and plaque

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

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%

What if audience is increased and click through also gets increased???

Or should they focus on practices like chiropractic medicine or acupuncture ??

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

So it becomes clear that no acupunture or

chiropractic medicine can help to get out

from loss

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

If they make their money from corporation they can reduce

their reliance on advertisers like Windham

But ,One worry !!!

Baker underestimates the genuine value that MedNet impression deliver to an advertiser

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

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 provides NO SALE??

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??

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

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?

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

Cholesterol.com is category killer

Focuses on chronic condition such as cardiovascular disease ,obesity

Cholesterol.com was launched by lawyer with$47

This sites recruited international doctors and designer .they could make information in 13 language including chinese

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

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

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

Insights from conference call

Treating visitors as patient as that of cholesterol.com did can reduce the dependency on advertising revenue

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?

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.

At last ..think on it

Would employers let them introduce pharmaceutical advertising ?

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

Sameer Mathur

MBASkills.in

Indian institute of Management Lucknow

Marketing professor 2013-

Marketing professor 2009-13

Ph.D and MS(marketing)2003-2009

Madhusudan DahalNational Institute of Technology surat

intern