- Shahnaz Mahmud

NEW YORK Healthline Networks has created a vertical ad network for niche advertisers and publishers, emphasizing its new contextual ad-matching capability.

The network, Health Semantic Taxonomy Ad Targeting (STAT) On-Demand, is designed to help advertisers more closely target consumers and enable publishers to better monetize their health content, particularly for unsold inventory.

Instead of key words, HealthSTAT focuses on concepts within publisher sites. For example, a page describing symptoms that include a scratchy throat and watery eyes could trigger ads for treatments of bronchitis or the common cold.

"This is an intelligent, scalable delivery system serving healthcare ads within trusted content environments," said John Lane, svp of advertising services at Healthline Networks.

"Pharma and health-related advertisers value contextual ad adjacency placements above all things. That is what their core desire is," said Lane. He explained that as Healthline is a "vertical search engine at heart" -- though not all medical sites are, and some are used mainly for referrals and research. "We've taken the next step in creating over 500 ad categories that can be relevant to a page view," he said.

"Healthline's search and advertising expertise ensure that our consumers navigate through relevant, quality health information, creating an overall site experience that builds loyalty and trust," said John Brown, general manager of Time Inc.'s Health.com.

The main sites for the new media network are Healthline.com and MyOptumHealth, a new consumer health portal from United Health that launches in the third quarter. Other participating publishers include AARP, Elder.com, HealthPricer, Just Answer, PracticeFusion and USNews.com.