By: Dexter Braff
If the Ambien has yet to kick in (or that late night pepperoni and jalapeño pizza has), you’ll probably notice that 1-800 TV ads for addiction treatment are squeezing out the chat lines, driver training schools, and injury lawyers during that oh-so-valuable time slot between midnight and 3 AM reruns of Robot Chicken and Family Guy.
Then there’s the hard-sell on the other end of the phone line with all the misdirection, truth-stretching, and out-right lies that would make a plaid-wearing used car salesman blush.
Now, of course, this isn’t the MO of all providers. The vast majority are honest, caring, and dedicated to the wellbeing of their clients.
But there are more than enough shady operators out there to make writing exposés on the sector practically a cottage industry.
Now Google is weighing in – with all its considerable weight.
In a move once applied to pay-day lenders, the sultans of search have decided it’s time to restrict advertising from addiction treatment providers, walking away from as much as $70.00 per click.
Now this is notable on a variety of levels:
First, it’s yet another reminder that in health care, the riff-raff follows the money, and can raise suspicion every bit as fast as a personal email from the minister of finance from Nigeria.
Second, it may rightly elicit a righteous “why-us?” from providers. After all, it’s unlikely that Google googles every industry and company it does business with to see if some of its players are a bit sketchy. As in they’re perfectly comfortable accepting ads for fortune tellers and herbal supplements that promise men increased, uh, stature.
Third, from a mergers and acquisitions perspective, it goes to the heart of one of addiction treatment’s greatest value drivers.
The closer a provider gets to generating business primarily from an uncompensated professional referral network – e.g., medical professionals, mental health practitioners, interventionists, other treatment providers, etc. – the closer it is to the safest, most predictable, most sustainable – and most valuable – revenue streams.
It’s not that SEO, television advertising, call centers, et. al. are inherently bad (they’re not).
It’s just that from a valuation standpoint, in addictions treatment – and just about every other health care service sector – uncompensated professional referrals are inherently the best.
Plus, you can avoid getting googly-eyed by Google.