• by Ken Liebeskind , April 9, 2001

B2BWorks continues to defy the dot.com downtrend, signing up deal after deal to add new sites to its b2b network of over 500 sites. This week, it announced the addition of 16 Thomson Healthcare websites, which greatly expands its health care vertical.

Most of the sites are associated with The Thomson Corp. health care publications, including Medical Economics (memag.com), Business and Health (businessandhealth.com) and Patient Care (patientcareonline.com). There are also seven Physicians' Desk Reference sites, which are Web only products. The sites are read by physicians and supported by health care advertising, most of it from pharmaceutical companies.

Stacey Reineking, a B2B Works spokeswoman, says the deal takes effect immediately. "We'll start selling ads right away," she says.

Thomson had used 24/7, another ad network, before signing with B2BWorks. It concluded a 15 month contract with 24/7 and switched to B2BWorks because, "we liked B2B's focus on b2b advertising and felt it was a good match with our business model," says Suzanne BeDell, Thomson's senior VP of Internet products. "They have an understanding of how media buyers work in the b2b space and the technology to provide information about who's on a site."

Reineking says B2BWorks offers another benefit, the DoubleClick Dart serving technology. B2BWorks signed a deal to use Dart and customize it for b2b advertising. The customization involved adding b2b pricing and reporting functions, she says.

BeDell is unsure how much online advertising Thomson had sold because the industry doesn't have a good handle on the numbers, she says. But pharmaceutical companies, renowned for their heavy spending, "are actively testing the Net as a way to reach physicians, she says." Thomson has run banner and button ads on its sites so far, but will introduce new large size formats like Skyscrapers, which B2BWorks suggested, BeDell says.

B2BWorks divides the sites it sells into 60 vertical markets and already had a health care vertical. The addition of the Thomson sites expands that vertical. "It's the first deal on this scale, they're the largest medical publisher we have in our network with 16 premiere sites," Reineking says.

The deal with Thomson follows another one B2BWorks signed last week with GE Services Network, a portal for the plastics and polymers industry. The company also signed recent deals with Office Max and VNU, the company that publishes top trade magazines, including Adweek.

- Ken Liebeskind may be reached at kenrunz@aol.com