• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, July 17, 2007

Seen as a huge online growth sector, health and fitness continues to attract big investment and executive talent.

This week alone, Healthline Networks, a San Francisco-based vertical search provider and destination site, secured $21 million in series-B financing led by GE/NBC Universal's Peacock Equity Fund. Robert Kadar, meanwhile, who most recently led national sales for the Healthology division of iVillage, is launching a vertical ad network, Good Health Advertising.

Healthline has struck technology distribution agreements to power health-related search queries on AOL, Ask.com, NBC Universal's iVillage, and Web sites run by health insurer Aetna. (Each multi-year partnership is based on revenue-sharing agreements, aside from Aetna, which is a variable licensing deal.)

These new search partnerships--which add to existing agreements with Merck, Merriam Webster, and U.S. News and World Report, among others--will give the company a collective brand reach of more than 30 million monthly health information seekers by year's end, according to Healthline chairman and CEO West Shell III.

"All of these portals are scrambling to address the same issue of aging consumers flooding the Web for health information," Shell explained. "And what they're just now realizing is how complicated a category search is. Many times, consumers don't know how to search for the information they need."

According to a recent Harris Poll, of the 136 million U.S. consumers now searching the Web for health-related topics, 60% said they found too much, too little, or irrelevant information.

Less than three years old, Healthline experienced a dramatic 269% year-over-year traffic increase in the first quarter of this year, according to comScore. With more than 6 million monthly visitors, the site now ranks as one of the top 10 most-trafficked online health verticals.

Brands in the information business like Ask.com and iVillage said they sought to partner with Healthline because of their own lack of expertise in the area of health-related search.

"Healthline is the clear leader in vertical health search," said Deborah Fine, president of iVillage. Beth Comstock, president of integrated media at NBC Universal, has also joined Healthline's board of directors.

Along with Peacock equity, Healthline is now backed by Aetna Ventures, JHK Investments LLC, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Mitsui & Co., Ltd., Reed Elsevier Ventures, U.S. News and World Report, and VantagePoint Venture Partners.

Peacock Equity is a $250 million equity capital fund, which was founded in April by GE Commercial Finance's Media, Communications and Entertainment business and NBC Universal. Its investments include high-growth areas like ad services, digital content and communities, wireless, health and international platforms.

Meanwhile, Robert Kadar's new vertical ad network, Good Health Advertising, is launching with ad sales partnerships with more than 30 health sites--representing a monthly reach of more than 6 million health-information seekers. Several of the sites being represented include MedHelp.org, HealthCastle.com, and Diet.com.

With Good Health Advertising, Kadar is attempting to reach those consumers who don't know where to begin their search for health information online.

"In today's search-dominated Internet environment, most consumers start their health research online via search and often end up navigating to those sites that best appear to meet their specific needs," Kadar explained. "As a result, millions of consumers bypass the big health sites and spend time on lesser-known, but excellent-quality sites. We exist to help these sites best monetize their growing traffic."

Overall, the online health information category reached an average of 55.3 million monthly U.S. visitors in the first quarter of 2007, according to comScore. That represented a 12% year-over-year increase for the period.

Category leaders remain WebMD Health with an average of 17.1 million unique visitors per month (up 25% over 2006), followed by NIH.gov (the National Institutes of Health) with 9.8 million visitors (up 8%). Yahoo Health enjoyed an 83% increase in visitors with 6.7 million during the first quarter of this year, according to comScore.