Mayo Clinic: Putting minds at rest about advertisers

Spelling out the terms on which advertisers are allowed onsite maintains faith in the trustworthiness of advice.

The Site

Mayoclinic.com is the online information centre of Mayo Clinic, one of the US’s leading healthcare providers. It uses decision and treatment guides, interviews with Mayo doctors and extensive reference sections to give users background and practical advice about hundreds of conditions.

Content can be searched by Health Center (23 of them from Allergy and Alzheimer’s to Women’s Health and Working Life) or via the Diseases & Conditions A-Z. For example, anyone worried about an irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia) will be linked via ‘H’ or the Heart Center to an article that can be further searched by section, such as Signs & Symptoms and Treatment.

Although most sections have a topic-related advertisement, the clinic places a link to its Advertising and Sponsorship Policy. This is a simple statement saying that, for example, advertisers must not make unsubstantiated claims or attempt to sell us health or life insurance.

The Takeaway

Mayo has been on the web since 1995 and has developed an extensive advice centre that shows how a site can tap into the fast-growing use of the web as a personal research tool.

However, it realises that while almost everyone is predisposed to trust a doctor the same may not be so true of the doctor’s website if it carries ads for third-party products and providers. To maintain its virtual patients’ faith in its trustworthiness and the objectivity of its advice Mayo must spell out the terms on which advertisers are allowed into its online consulting room. Hence the link to the policy page.

This is a simple use of one of the web’s basic capabilities – and it is also something that is impossible in print. How could a health site give similar comfort in a paper document?

First published on 21 October, 2003