I missed an interesting item late last week, which is that U.S. News and HealthiNation have partnered for the second year to present their "2010-2011 Best Hospitals" video series. The series showcases U.S. News health rankings editor Avery Comarow providing an explanation of the rankings process and then drilling down into 5 specialty medical areas. There are 10 videos in this year's series and this time they are also embeddable.
I like the approach as it provides an accessible introduction to the magazine's text content, and also provides a jumping off point into HealthiNation's deeper catalog of health-related videos. Raj Amin, HealthiNation's CEO told me that his company does all of the video production, which in turn gives U.S. News a turnkey, valuable video augment to their print model. There's a banner ad at the bottom of each video player providing incremental revenue.
Raj said HealthiNation has seen a 300% increase in revenue over the last year. He attributes that to agencies and brands learning more about the benefits of online video and HealthiNation's laser-focus on health and wellness, which attracts a targeted audience. HealthiNation focuses on engagement metrics such as click-throughs and back-end conversion to differentiate itself from typical TV advertising. HealthiNation is also making a push to gain new health-related consumer product advertisers with the recent addition of Matt Pasternak as VP of Partnerships and Market Development.