• by Melynda Fuller , July 29, 2019

This spring, Rem edy Health Media acquired Vertical Health and added new brands to its network, creating a destination that serves patients and healthcare professionals. 

One of the benefits of this merger: Remedy Health Media could now help pharmaceutical and medical marketing partners reach potential customers in a variety of ways. The DMP that Vertical Health brought with it is making that ability stronger.

“The thesis we built the DMP around is we’re continuing to evolve the business. The more we can understand the user, the better we can serve their needs,” Brent Phelps, Remedy Health’s executive vice president of data and strategy told Publishers Daily. 

"It’s important we’re good publishers that can get the right content in front of people at the right time so they can have better health outcomes.”

When publishing content around chronic health conditions, which Remedy does through titles like HealthCentral, TheBody, EndocrineWeb, Psycom and SpineUniverse, content needs for users are fairly predictable.

Remedy Health, which clocks just over 40 million unique users a month, is able to use scale and depth of information to speak to conditions across its vertical, creating some important synergy since the merger.

Using the example of a type 2 diabetes diagnosis, Phelps explains that a user who is googling insulin is generally at the beginning of diagnosis and treatment. EndocrineWeb is frequently the top search result. When a user enters the site, the DMP begins to build a de-identified profile for them.

In the case of diabetes, a user might next need information around oral medication, oral insulin or a weekly injectable, other health conditions that might afflict them, like heart or mental-health issues.

Remedy Health can then customize the content the user receives across websites, social and newsletters, also delivering a highly specialized target audience to advertisers and sponsors.

Phelps said: “The DMP helps us understand where the patient is in their continuum of care, so we can surround them with the right kind of content that will serve their needs better.”

Because of the specialization of information collected by Remedy Health, it can help advertisers know exactly when and where a brand should be boosted to readers, resulting in more meaningful ad investment.

He continued: “We’re building a relationship with our users. When they come to one of our properties, we deliver them content that really serves them on a regular basis. So over time, the opportunities created for advertisers are similar.”