How does FDA’s fair balance ruling for search ads affect portals such as WebMd?
It will affect health portals in a couple of ways. The limitation on search ads will force marketers to spend more on display ads, where they don’t have the same character limitations as in Google ads. So the net effect will be an increase in demand for display media units in general, which should have a positive impact on health portal revenue. But there may be a less obvious effect as well – accelerating the movement away from branded ad units in general (whether in search ads or display) and towards disease-state content that then drives to a richer brand experience. There are a number of advantages to this approach: It requires far fewer restrictions to the content, it gains much higher response rates, and it sets up the conversation properly for the patient so that they are prepared for the branded message when it is exposed to them. • How should companies handle possible adverse event reporting when engaging in social media monitoring? There have been two schools of thought on th
