WebMD HLTH Corporation Q3 2009 Earnings Call Transcript

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2009-11-03 20:41:08.0

Tags: Channel, Pharmaceutical Company, Call Transcript, WebMD, Earnings, Marketing Research, Marketing, Seeking Alpha, HLTH Corp.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from Mark Mahaney with Citigroup.

Mark Mahaney – Citigroup

On the materiality on both the UK launch and the pets vertical, the pets offering, anyway to help us think about how big that can be, what kind of margin impact that could have, and secondly, and we asked this question last quarter too; there has been lot of regulatory changes or regulatory challenges to some online advertising but really to offline advertising that may have at some point boosted growth on your site. Any update on what you’re seeing there, particularly in terms of ISI requirements?

Wayne Gattinella

On the new market side, the Pets channel that launched last month is currently up on the core site. As I mentioned, it is a new market. It’s already attracting some new advertisers that we haven’t had in the past. I mentioned Purina on the call, and actually if you go onto that channel, you’ll start to see some other advertisers that we haven’t had in the past, so it’s a new area for us, but we are learning that adults who care for their own health also are concerned about the health of their cats and dogs, and we see it as a great extension of the brand both at the consumer level, potentially also at the vet level, so we think that the numbers will be produced in that channel will be baked into the guidance that we’re putting out for 2010.

The launch of the channel in the UK is a little bit more forward. There’s really nothing in our current numbers that reflect anything of significance coming from that portal. Certainly we’ll monitor it closely. We’re right now trying to drive user traffic to the channel, but we really expect that it won’t be till 2011 till we see anything significant coming from that initiative.

To your second question on the regulatory front, the search-related ISI disclosures, I think we’ve seen some benefits from that as the pharma market in particular has shifted some of the search dollars into core either display or sponsored programming. We’re seeing that in our consumer business today, but certainly there is the threat of further regulation or restrictions in terms of what pharma can do even in other offline channel marketing, and we’re seeing increased interest from the pharmaceutical segment in taking what were sort of more traditional or poor broadcast media spend and figuring out how we might be able to do some more integrated kinds of programming using our site either in conjunction with our offline marketing or with a replacement of some of those offline marketing budgets.

 

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