Amraa's writeup

Q1.
Due to the information overflow phenomenon of the internet, mainly advertisements, consumers or internet surfers have developed a universal habit of ignoring, closing, or even blocking advertisements. Internet engineers have developed several ways of counting ad penetration, exposure, clicks as precisely as possible, but according to the unflinching warriors of MedNet.com, the value created behind each CPM, or click-throughs differs between websites due to different overall value-proposition by the site for the customers, which seem not to be well perceived by advertisers because that can’t be precisely measured by internet tools.

People find MedNet.com through search engines like Marvel.com (4.3M - MedNet vs. 19M Marvel). The viewer type is different for MedNet.com. They come to the site when “in crisis”, hence MedNet banners are more persuasive for them. What’s more, due to expertise information on the site, viewers believe that banners placed under MedNet brand is worth trying.
Q2.
What is more important for an advertiser, cheaper click-throughs or good sales leads that bring real sales dollars? Advertisement is a way of leaving impression in customer’s minds (brand awareness), which hopefully will result lucrative and repetitive leads that will produce increasing sales revenue. Leads are created through brand awareness. For mere brand awareness or brand recognition, banners placed on suitable sites will do just fine. But what good is a lead (click throughs) if it doesn’t land a solid sales figure?

Sales is and will be measured the same way everywhere, at any time – through figures on income statement - the sales revenue. Brand-awareness builds up as the exposure to add increases in the short and becomes brand-knowledge in the long run. Impressions or CPM is good enough for measuring brand awareness. But for measuring leads, obviously, click-throughs seem to be more feasible way. As the phenomenon mentioned above, not many people click on ad-banners, so those who click on banners do qualify the term of sales leads. But one should be aware that click throughs generated by condition-specific sites are more likely to be “real” sales leads.
Q3.
Obviously, what advertisers wait from ad-pages is the conversion of ad-dollars to sales figures, which is the act of making purchase, repetitive if possible, from the ad-sponsor. The more people are exposed to the ads of the advertiser, the more brand awareness builds up, the more the brand awareness, the more the leads and sales – hopefully larger market share. Since brand-awareness is so important, because ultimately it produces sales revenue, firms are in favor of building strong brand awareness. In our case, brand awareness is built through impressions from the sites, but every impression costs dollars. Word-of-mouth (advertising through the customers) is a cost-free way of advertising a brand; hence firms will be interested in websites, especially content-specific sites that are rich in content, and accurate at targeting customers with right ads at right moment. In other words, firms would want to see not only do customers purchase through the ads, but also forward the ads to someone else.

Also advertisers, due to limited funds, “unlimited” competitors and websites that offer similar contents and options, want to see customers to visit as few web-sites as possible before coming to a verdict. The more customers are exposed to different websites the higher is the probability of being attracted to another similar product.

Advertisers will also be interested in acquiring customers’ personal information, and registration to the site. That way, they are better equipped to attack them with not only new products but also with the attractive and right products.
Q4.
Although content acquisition makes up 34% of total expense, MedNet should still focus on enriching its contents on alternative therapies, and scientifically based solutions with legal disclaimers. (To compete with U.S. National Library of Medicine and WHO)

Technology support is 12% of the expense. They should focus on changing the looks of the site. According to the case, viewers are divided into Western-Med based (chemical ingredients) and Alternative Health (organic, natural ingredients) based. Whether or not a website is too crowded or overfilled with information (like yahoo.com.tw) lies on the cosmetics of the site. MedNet can create two versions of the site (like AMD and ATi site) under the same URL for both customer bases. They should provide herbal medicine therapies, its related news and findings, and information for the original customers as well in easy to view and navigate way.

User friendliness is also important. Although the survey revealed that 60% of viewers aren’t in favor of leaving personal information on the site, but the function of a “disposable” entry like blood pressure, body weight information that follows the user during the search will be seen as convenience. What’s more, as long as it doesn’t severely violate any related regulations, recommending suitable treatment would also mean another user-friendliness.

Last, sales and marketing expense stands for 27% of the total expenses. They should look for alternative income methods. Besides selling contents, MedNet, by designing seamless framework, can sell doctor’s prescription and necessary drugs for the prescription (NTU Hospital website lets patients to fill out a survey like sheet and diagnose one’s health condition). MedNet could also offer lower-cost medical information service for companies. With their strong business network, MedNet should come up with pharmaceutical suppliers and medical doctors for those companies at cheaper price.

In the long run, MedNet should project for becoming global online pharmacy with solid information that sells medicine like Netflix does with DVDs, and prescribes doctor’s treatment like hospitals do for patients. They should not only focus on the local market, but the 21st century core of the business world – Asia. Indians, being former colony to Britain, do have English background, but the rest of the Asia communicates through 漢字 – or Chinese Characters. MedNet should definitely run a Chinese version of the site.