Posts for 'HealthiNation'

Health and lifestyle video creator HealthiNation is announcing its availability on Roku devices this morning. The move extends HealthiNation's content syndication approach which helped place it third in comScore's Video Metrix ranking of health-related sites last month. HealthiNation racked up 3.1 million unique visitors, putting it ahead of WebMD and Everyday Health, and trailing only 5Min and HealthGuru. As Raj Amin, HealthiNation's CEO told me last week, the company gains the bulk of its traffic through its third-party syndication network of approximately 25 partners.

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HealthiNation, an independent provider of health-related online videos, is announcing this morning that online industry veteran Doug McFarland has joined as Chief Digital Officer to oversee digital strategy and operations. McFarland was previously co-CEO of Dimestore Media (acquired by Knowledge Networks), CEO of online video ad network ScanScout, EVP/GM of Eyeblaster and EVP/GM of Advertising.com. He's also been on HealthiNation's board for the last two years.

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Last week brought two announcements suggesting that the health-related video vertical market is poised for growth: first, that HealthiNation will be distributing its videos on AT&T U-Verse and HealthGrades, and the second, that HealthCentral is partnering with 5Min to syndicate its videos across 5Min's distribution network.

I've been following HealthiNation for a while and last week CEO and co-founder Raj Amin told me that the AT&T deal brings to about 28 million the number of American homes where HealthiNation's content is available on video-on-demand (VOD). Raj's enthusiasm for VOD distribution helps validate points I made last May in "Made-for-Broadband Video and VOD are Looking Like Peanut Butter and Chocolate," in which I suggested that rather than broadband video and VOD being competitive with each other, they can actually complement each other well.

In HealthiNation's case, Raj indicated that VOD distribution is particularly important for its sponsors, as they value views in the living room in addition to those on the computer, where most broadband video occurs today. The multiple ways that VOD is promoted by incumbent video providers given HealthiNation's content lots of visibility. The downside Raj noted is that VOD lacks the same interactivity/engagement opportunities as viewing online provides, and that inserting ads is not nearly as easy. The latter means that HealthiNation must manually attach ads to each of its VOD streams. This would be extremely laborious for content providers with hundreds or thousands of titles, but for HealthiNation, which offers dozens of VOD titles at a time, it is manageable. Raj emphasizes that VOD's ability to help surround the consumer with content and sponsor messages is a key differentiator for HealthiNation, and a key reason it has pushed hard into VOD.

HealthiNation's strategy is primarily to syndicate its content rather than be a destination site, and it has over 50 partners in its network now, with potential reach of about 40 million unique visitors/month. HealthiNation insists that its video be played in its player, and that it controls the ad inventory. This is primarily because of its commitments to its sponsors (mainly pharma) to deliver only highly targeted viewers, provide detailed performance metrics and use mostly display ads, not pre-rolls. All of these contribute to HealthiNation offering a differentiated value proposition relative to typical TV ads.

Separate, HealthiNation also announced a partnership last week with HealthGrades, which is the leading provider of ratings information on doctors, hospitals and nursing homes. Overall Raj said that at its peak, HealthiNation is now generating 3 million uniques/month. It has over 300 videos that are 2-3 minutes long (or longer for VOD) and growing. The company has raised $12.5 million in total, and Raj says it will be profitable in 2010.

Meanwhile last week also brought news that HealthCentral, a large online provider of health-related content and operator of a health-related online ad network, is partnering with 5Min, a video syndicator which I wrote about here. Under the deal HealthCentral's videos will be added to 5Min's existing health library, for syndication to over 350 different sites. HealthCentral will take on exclusive ad sales responsibilities for pharma and OTC clients for 5Min's video focused on health, specific conditions, parenting, pregnancy, fitness and nutrition.

The HealthCentral deal is similar to the recent deal 5Min did with Scripps Networks in the food and home & garden categories. In both, 5Min landed a large anchor content partner, to which it then gave exclusive ad sales responsibilities for part of the category. In this way 5Min gains both valuable content and also category-specific advertising expertise. I continue to like how 5Min is building out its model methodically across important content categories.

Even as Washington slogs through health care reform legislation, the health-related online video space is rapidly evolving. More than ever, individuals recognize the need to educate themselves. Video provides a breakthrough way to simply and completely explain complex ideas. As a result I see lots of growth ahead in this vertical.

What do you think? Post a comment now.

This week I'll be at Digital Hollywood Fall in LA, the first big industry gathering I've attended since the economic crisis hit. I've been trying to keep my finger on the pulse of what the crisis means for the broadband video industry. Get-togethers like this, with lots of time for informal, off-the-record chats are great for getting a sense of what colleagues think is on the industry's horizon.

Here are 3 interrelated areas I'm most interested in learning about:

Financing

With the credit markets frozen and stock markets tumbling, the availability of financing is topic number one. This is especially relevant for the industry's many earlier stage companies, reliant on private financing from venture capitalists, angels and other private equity investors.

By my count we've seen at least 9 good-sized financings announced since around Labor Day, when the financial markets started coming unglued: Howcast ($2M), blip.tv (undisclosed), Booyah ($4.5M), BlackArrow ($20M), HealthiNation ($7.5M), Adap.tv ($13M), BitTorrent ($17M), Conviva ($20M), and Move Networks (Microsoft, undisclosed). The rumor mill tells me there are at least 2-3 additional financings underway currently. Really smart money (e.g. Warren Buffet) knows that downturns are exactly the time to invest. However, the reality can often be quite different. What's the experience of industry participants trying to raise money these days?

Staffing

In any downturn, the first expense to get cut is people. Headcount reductions are often done quietly, with word later leaking out to the public. Last week brought news of trimming at three indie video providers, Break (11 people), ManiaTV (20) and Heavy (12). More are sure to follow at other companies. As I've written before, the indies are among the most vulnerable in this environment, likely leading many to find bigger partners for both distribution and monetization. But whether layoffs will hit other industry sectors such as platforms, ad networks, CDNs, mobile video and big media is still to be determined by...

Customer spending

Central to the question of how deeply the financial crisis spirals is the interdependence of customer spending at all levels of the economy. Thinking you're safe because you're a B2B company is meaningless if your customers are B2C companies cutting back due to reductions in consumer spending. When consumers tighten their belts that leads to advertisers reducing their spending which leads to media companies scaling back which leads to technology vendors feeling the impact. The reality is we're all in this together.

In fact, the more I read about the economy's fragile condition, the clearer it is that the primary way out is rebuilding confidence and renewed spending at all levels. If a spending paralysis occurs, it could be long road ahead. While there's no reason to believe that consumers are going to slow their consumption of broadband media, the ability to monetize it and innovate around it would be dampened if spending hits a wall.

These are among the topics I'll be looking to discuss at Digital Hollywood this week. If you're attending, drop me a note so we can try to meet up and/or come by the session I'll be moderating on Wednesday at 12:30pm.

What do you think? Post a comment now!