Meredith Acquires Health Vertical Search Engine Healia, Furthers Goal to Reach More US Women Via Digital Platforms
Monday, 18 June 2007
Meredith Corporation (NYSE:MDP), one of America’s leading media and marketing companies, has acquired Healia (www.healia.com), a consumer health search engine specializing in finding high quality and personalized health information online. Terms were not disclosed.
The Jordan, Edmiston Group, Inc. (JEGI), the New York City-based investment banking firm that specializes in media and information, represented Healia in this transaction and acted as its exclusive financial advisor.
“The demand for health information is booming and is of particular interest to women,” said Meredith Publishing Group President Jack Griffin. “We reach more than 75 million American women on a monthly basis through our publishing, broadcasting, and online media brands and services. Providing access to trusted health information is a core component of our leading brands, including Better Homes and Gardens, Parents, American Baby, Ladies’ Home Journal, More and Fitness. The acquisition of Healia is an important step in our strategic initiatives to expand our reach in the women’s health market and to provide content-focused services online.”
Approximately four out of five consumers first use a search engine to find health information. Healia, a winner of numerous industry awards, provides innovative search technology that guides health professionals and consumers to the highest quality and most personally relevant search results. Through its proprietary, patent-pending content filtering technology, Healia serves as a gateway to quality health information and helps consumers find more refined and responsive answers to health and wellness-related questions.
Healia presents consumers with a number of “personalization” filters for narrowing search results by gender, age, and racial/ethnic group, as well as “contextual” filters for consumers to focus their search for prevention, causes/risks, symptoms, diagnosis/tests, treatment and side effects information. These capabilities provide marketers with unprecedented opportunities for demographic and contextual targeting of health consumers. Search is a growing online advertising and marketing platform, and Healia provides Meredith with unique opportunities for targeted and precision marketing.
“Meredith’s great brands, broad consumer reach and marketing expertise make it the perfect partner to establish Healia as the premier health search engine site,” said Healia Founder and CEO Dr. Tom Eng, who will continue to lead Healia. “In the next several months, Healia will be launching additional tools and functionality to broaden its service offerings and to redefine health search as we know it.”
In the coming months, Healia’s technology will be integrated into Meredith’s existing web sites. In addition, Meredith and Healia will expand the functionality of Healia.com and will offer the technology through licensing and distribution agreements with select health organizations, consumer Web sites, employers and other premier partners.
This is Meredith’s fourth acquisition bolstering the company’s online services and capabilities in the last year. Previously, the company acquired online marketing service firms O’Grady Meyers, Genex, and New Media Strategies.
Additionally, the company has redesigned its flagship Web site — Better Homes and Gardens.com — and launched its first broadband video channel (Better.tv). Next month, Meredith will launch a new parents portal — Parents.com — as well as its second broadband channel (Parents.tv).
“Our acquisition of Healia reflects our continuing focus on selectively acquiring and integrating new media businesses that add unique value to advertisers and consumers,” said Meredith Chief Development Officer John Zieser. “We continue to identify and evaluate numerous opportunities for acquisitions, strategic investments and other relationships that expand our new media capabilities, as well as establish us as a leader in the health and wellness category.”