Placing Public Health Announcements on Google as Paid Ads

Smartphones can be used as platforms for e-health campaigns (see: Making e-Health Information Accessible with Smart Phones, The Mobile Web and the Future of eHealth). It is also understood that healthcare consumers frequently turn to the web for health advice (see: Paging Dr. Google! We Are Waiting for a Second Opinion). Now comes news that the New York City Health Department was purchasing ad space on Google to disseminate information about the recent flu outbreak (see: NYC Health Dept. Buys Google Ads for Flu Searches). Below is an excerpt form the article with boldface emphasis mine:

When the [Wall Street Journal] Health Blog Googled “flu” this morning, we were surprised to see an ad for the New York City Health Department show up at the top of the search results page....So what’s a public-health agency doing buying search ads? We gave the health department a call to learn more, and got the skinny from Jeffrey Escoffier, director of health media and marketing....And people have continued to show up at the emergency room worried that they might have the swine flu, Escoffier said. So the department thought buying Google ads might be a way to direct people to the information they need online, to reduce calls to 311 and help people understand when it’s appropriate to seek medical care. The ads, which started running on Monday, only show up for people in the five boroughs. But they run on a bunch of different searches, including “H1N1″ and “swine.” So far, somewhere around 1,000 people a day have been clicking through on the ads, Escoffier said. He said the price varies by keyword, and couldn’t say how much the city has spent so far. We asked Escoffier if he thought his boss, NYC health commish Thomas Frieden, should take the idea of buying Google ads with him to his new job as head of the CDC. “It would be a good idea, I think,” he said. But a moment later he reconsidered. “CDC doesn’t need it,” he said. “Whenever you do a Google search, they show up on the first page.”

First of all, I think that purchasing ad space on Google provides an excellent communication channel for public service announcements including those relating to public health. I have no concern about the relatively minor cost of such ads which would probably yield a net savings for public health organization. People acquiring critical information on the web would not need to tie up the public health department's telephone lines. The placement of such ads can be tuned to only display for designated geographic areas and the cost for them would also be commensurately lower.

Of particular interest to me was the quote from the spokesperson from the New York City Health Department that the CDC would not need to place such Google ads for its critical messages because it had sufficient "Google juice" for high-level display on the Google search engine retrieval pages (SERP). I have posted previous notes about these specialized topics (see: Snap Google Quiz on a Tuesday Morning, Journalist Provides Advice about Search Engine Optimization). It's worthy of note that a director of health media and marketing for a public health agency would be this familiar with search engine optimization (SEO). It's a whole new world out there.