Scientific Communication in the Age of Coronavirus

Use Case: Promoting Article Collections

The Covid-19 pandemic has created an urgent need for the dissemination of scientifically sound and up-to-date information related to the disease, its treatment, and its impact on the public at large. As large annual scientific conferences face cancellation, publishers and authors are already struggling to find new channels of communications for findings usually delivered through conference presentations and poster sessions. If you are a publisher or an author reporting or commenting on an issue as time-critical as this emerging crisis, what can you do to make sure that your voice is heard amid all the noise?

TrendMD can help fill this gap by raising the visibility of scientific articles, editorial content, blog postings, and other informational materials through our recommendations service, which is used on over 4,700 journals and other research-oriented sites that are visited by more than 180 million users per month.

Here are a few examples of Coronavirus-related articles on prominent journals like JAMA, PNAS, The BMJ and Science, as well as in the publications of more specialized societies like the American Thoracic Society. The TrendMD recommendations that appear with these articles suggest additional content from publications and sites that the reader may not regularly visit. These suggestions are selected from millions of articles, using TrendMD’s Collaborative Filtering technology. This technology, which works similarly to Amazon or Netflix, recommends to the reader the most relevant additional content, based on the article he or she is reading, what other users like them have read, and what they have read in the past.

Publishers can increase the likelihood of their content being recommended by running campaigns at cost-per-click (“CPC”) pricing. CPC will vary, based on the length and size of the campaign, and the degree of user targeting - from “Run of market” (i.e. no targeting) to limits based on geo-location, institutional affiliation, or by healthcare professional specialty. Here are a couple of examples of recent campaigns related to the current crisis:

Publisher #1 initiated a campaign on Feb 1, 2020, starting with 16 articles with keywords ‘Corona’, ‘Zoo’, and ‘DDVAC.’ Their total budget of $2000 was set with daily limits for even pacing. The campaign was updated on Feb 12, 2020, eliminating the ‘Zoo’ and ‘DDVAC’ content. The select articles received over 9.6 million impressions and nearly 2,400 clicks (pageviews) during the month of February.

Publisher #2 launched a campaign to promote 10 articles related to the coronavirus on Mar 6, 2020 with an initial $1,000 budget and set with weekly limits. On Mar 10, after seeing the high demand for the content, the publisher increased the weekly limit to $500. One week later, on Mar 17, the budget was increased to $938 per week. As of this writing (March 18) the campaign has resulted in over 5.6 million impressions, and over 1,600 clicks.

These are just two examples of publishers who are successfully promoting their content by making TrendMD a key part of their overall marketing strategy. We have many more success stories that show TrendMD to be a powerful channel for efficiently and effectively reaching a targeted audience of researchers and professionals. For more information and assistance with designing a strategy that meets your needs, contact your account manager or support@trendmd.com.