DALLAS—Essilor of America has acquired AllAboutVision.com, VMail has learned. AllAboutVision.com is a consumer website designed as a source of unbiased and comprehensive information about eye health, vision correction, and vision correction products and services.

Launched in January 2000 to provide consumers with an independent and objective source of information, AllAboutVision.com served more than 45 million visitors in 2015 and has about 500 pages of content about such topics as digital eye strain, children’s vision, nutrition and the importance of eye exams. The company also offers a way for eyecare professionals to share information or point their patients to vision care information on the site and via social media. An doctor directory provides a way for ECPs to drive traffic and connect with their end consumers in targeted ways.

Said Howard Purcell, OD, senior vice president, customer development for Essilor of America, “We are incredibly excited about this acquisition. We’ve admired AllAboutVision.com for a long time. Consumer behavior is changing, and the web is the first place consumers go to for information. The growth of e-commerce is a lot about the hunger for more information and knowledge. We’ve been looking at ways to learn more about the consumer, and as a company we spend money on advertising and we continue to speak to consumers in many ways.

"For the past 16 years, AllAboutVision represents a true standard about helping consumers to engage and learn. There’s a lot of misinformation out there about the vision category but a vehicle like AllAboutVision enhances our goal to bring greater awareness to consumers about the things that are important regarding their eye health. We’ve had a solid relationship with AllAboutVision over the years, but we don’t intend much change; however we can bring some additional resources to them to help expand what they do. It’s long been our goal to help build and aggressively promote the relationship between the practitioner and the consumer.”

Purcell said that Shankar Raja, vice president, digital, for Essilor will be the point person for the group, which will report into him. Raja commented, “We see AllAboutVision as serving an important role, and it can be a key starting point to deepen the relationships between practitioners and consumers. We also have a goal to find ways to use this to extend our reach to consumers and engage them with constructive and useful information, and we think there’s an opportunity to do that in the U.S. as well as globally.”

The current AllAboutVision.com team, including Ron Walker, publisher, Tom Meinert, associate publisher, Liz Segre, editorial director and Gary Heiting, OD, senior editor, are all continuing in their current roles after the acquisition, which closed for an undisclosed amount, on June 1, Essilor executives said. The site’s articles will continue to be developed with the input of an advisory board of eyecare professionals and its approach to content will remain unbiased, they emphasized. The site will also continue to sell advertising and sponsorships to companies that provide eyecare products and services.

“AllAboutVision.com will continue to be run in the manner it has been since its inception,” said Walker. “Tom, Liz and I are very enthusiastic about being part of a company with such a deep commitment to consumer education about eye health and vision correction. More than 5,000 practices either link to us, or use one of our services such as syndicated content, infographics, embeddable videos or the Facebook news feed.”

The site’s growth in unique visitors has been a result of several converging trends, Walker noted, including an increased demand for all kinds of health information on the part of the consumer in all areas, the rise of Google’s search prominence and, more recently, the huge impact of mobile. “Now people carry the internet in their pocket and when they have a question, they immediately search and can find answers to what they need. “

Said Purcell, “Essilor’s investment in AllAboutVision will enable them to accelerate what they’ve been doing, and in the process, will serve to broaden this educational platform for consumers as well as for eyecare professionals.”