HealthCentral.com Boosts Site Engagement With Aggregate Knowledge
Doubles Reader Engagement Across HealthCentral.com Sites
San Mateo, CA—September 26, 2007—The HealthCentral Network, Inc. of Arlington, Virginia (www.HealthCentral.com), has found the remedy for making it easy for its visitors to discover the health and medical information they need. The popular health website has tapped Aggregate Knowledge, the leader in online discovery, to drive content discovery across HealthCentral.com and its network of owned and operated health and medical websites.
The HealthCentral Network, Inc. offers a collection of 30 owned and operated websites and multimedia affiliate properties. These websites provide timely, in-depth, trusted medical information, personalized tools and resources and connections to a vast community of leading experts and patients for people seeking to manage and improve their health. The sites include breaking news experiences from patients, physicians and caregivers and clinical and therapeutic information. More than 8 million people a month visit HealthCentral’s sites and those of its affiliates to find information related to their health and medical conditions.
"When people go to a health website, they want to be treated like people, not patients," said Scott Rothrock, chief technology officer at The HealthCentral Network. "Our readers want scientific, medical facts, but also want to learn about the personal experiences of others facing the same condition. With Aggregate Knowledge, we can recommend the most relevant articles, patient posts and information based on what people are actually doing on our site – it doesn’t get any more personal than that."
HealthCentral has deployed Aggregate Knowledge Onsite Discovery™ to provide "reader-driven" content suggestions in the form of "People Who Read This Also Read" across its websites. With each click on an article, Aggregate Knowledge Onsite Discovery delivers content suggestions based on what readers are actually viewing on the site at that exact moment in time. This offering helps get their content to readers in a more natural way, dramatically improving engagement and click-through rates, while lowering the cost and time associated with manual content linking and management.
"Aggregate Knowledge helps our visitors discover the information they are looking for and often find content that they didn’t know existed," said Rothrock. "As people explore our sites for information, Aggregate Knowledge draws upon their behavior to surface deeper and more relevant content suggestions. This creates a very positive and powerful experience for our site visitors, as they are literally leading each other to the most relevant information related to their health and medical conditions."
"Before we started using Aggregate Knowledge Onsite Discovery, our sites achieved a three to five percent click-through rate," said Rothrock. "Once we started using Aggregate Knowledge, that number jumped to about eight percent. That shows our readers are responding well to the discovery window which also boosts our value to our advertisers and sponsors."
Previously, HealthCentral site producers manually linked material they thought would be useful to their readers. With Aggregate Knowledge Onsite Discovery, content suggestions are completely automated and always up-to-date based on the real-time collective behavior of the sites' visitors. "The Aggregate Knowledge system saves us from having to manually link content across our sites, which takes a lot of time and effort and is often not relevant," said Rothrock. "Our content producers can now focus on other high value initiatives and let our readers drive each other to the best and most relevant information on our sites."
Deployment of Aggregate Knowledge Onsite Discovery was straightforward and quick, according to Rothrock. "We added a few lines of Aggregate Knowledge's code to our templates and then ran it in silent mode for a few weeks while the software collected a critical mass of data. We did a little work to match the style of the discovery window to our pages and then turned it on. This took two or three weeks and we were done."
"HealthCentral is one of the most successful health and medical sites on the Internet, and we are excited to help their millions of readers find the information they need," said Paul Martino, Aggregate Knowledge CEO and founder. "HealthCentral is a great example of how companies are turning to the Aggregate Knowledge Discovery Network to drive engagement, cut costs and create positive and differentiated websites experiences."
Aggregate Knowledge Onsite Discovery delivers breakthroughs in visitor engagement through real-time content suggestions across media websites. Onsite Discovery is part of the Aggregate Knowledge Discovery Network, which is a set of offerings that enable companies to drive content and product suggestions on their own sites, to and from partner, retail and advertiser sites in the network, and through emails. The Aggregate Knowledge Discovery Network helps companies improve engagement, create new revenue opportunities, drive more traffic, and maximize the value of all their content assets.
About The HealthCentral Network
The HealthCentral Network, Inc. (www.HealthCentral.com) is a new and unique online offering, comprised of over 30 general health and highly specific condition and wellness web properties, each committed to offering a voice in everyday and personal language people can understand and connect with at critical points in their lives. Each site provides timely, interactive, in-depth and trusted medical information (from Harvard Health Publications among others), and connections to leading experts and thousands of people who share their related experiences and inspiration.
The HealthCentral Network recently launched personal health tools including the most comprehensive web solution for caregivers managing their communities of friends and families (www.carecentral.com). The company also produces the nationally syndicated television show, "Medical Breakthroughs with Dr. Dean Edell," and has a library of nearly 1,000 short-form, condition-specific videos throughout its network.
The HealthCentral Network was acquired in 2005 by Polaris Ventures, Sequoia Capital, The Carlyle Group and Allen & Company, and has built a management team that combines decades of experience in interactive media and medical, science and news journalism. The company received top recognition from The International Health and Medical Media Awards with a 2006 FREDDIE Award for MyDiabetesCentral.com and the Health Care Standard of Excellence WebAward from the Web Marketing Association.
About Aggregate Knowledge
Aggregate Knowledge offers the industry's first Discovery Network that emulates the way people naturally discover and shop for products and information offline. Built on top of a sophisticated super computing architecture, Aggregate Knowledge harnesses the collective behavior of Internet users to drive the most relevant content and product placements on customer's Web sites, across multiple network sites, and through email and affiliate promotions. Aggregate Knowledge helps companies dramatically improve engagement and conversions, create new revenue opportunities, and deliver differentiated experiences on their Web sites. Aggregate Knowledge was recently acknowledged as an AlwaysOn Media 100 winner, a Supernova Connected Innovator, and was selected as a Dealmaker Media “Ones to Watch” company. Aggregate Knowledge is funded by premier venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, DAG Ventures, and First Round Capital.
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Media Contact:
Krause Taylor Associates for Aggregate Knowledge
Jennifer Henderson
408 918-9092 direct
408 918-9080 main
jennifer@krause-taylor.com
Aggregate Knowledge, the Aggregate Knowledge logo, Aggregate Knowledge Onsite Discovery, and Aggregate Knowledge Discovery are trademarks of Aggregate Knowledge Corporation in the United States, and other jurisdictions, as applicable. All other company, product, or service names contained herein may be trademarks or service marks of others. All statements regarding plans, directions, and intent of Aggregate Knowledge are subject to change without notice
Copyright © 2007 Aggregate Knowledge, Inc. All rights reserved.
