HealthGuru Media Gets Funding

HealthGuru.com publisher HealthGuru Media on Wednesday closed a Series C financing worth $3.2 million. Castile Ventures led the round, with participation from existing investor Village Ventures.

With a particular focus on video, HealthGuru specifically targets 18- to-40-year-olds looking for health and wellness information online.

"HealthGuru.com provides differentiated health information for an underserved but highly active demographic," said CEO Joshua Silberstein. "We do this by focusing on conditions like pregnancy, sexual health, and college health that are of interest to our audience."

Building on its current base of two million unique visitors per month, the funding will help the company expand its channels for traffic acquisition and ramp up its revenue-generating capabilities, according to Silberstein.

The Health Guru content library presently has over 1,000 videos covering some 75 health conditions, which are distributed on its own site along with YouTube and MySpace TV.

Among consumers and advertisers, a market for health-related online platforms certainly exists. And it's not only baby boomers visiting health and wellness resources online -- over 50% of young people ages 13-24 are accessing the same information, according to a recent study from Ypulse, an independent media platform for youth media and marketing professionals, the sexual health-focused nonprofit ISIS, young leader support organization YouthNoise, and market research firm Peanut Labs.

What's more, the health care industry -- historically big advertisers -- continues to move a greater share of ad dollars online, according to recent data from The Nielsen Co.

The sector is therefore proving attractive to investors even in a tough economy. Health-focused social networking startup Alliance Health Networks, for one, recently raised $3.3 million in a third round of funding. Led by Highway 12 Ventures, existing investor EPIC Ventures also participated in this latest round.

Launched in 2006, Alliance Health's first social network was DiabeticConnect.com -- a social network for people with diabetes, which now has a reported 50,000 registered members, and about 900,000 unique monthly users, according to Compete.

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