Turner Asia Pacific has made a strategic investment in leading Vietnamese digital media and creator network POPS Worldwide, which will see the global broadcast giant take a minority stake in the outfit. The investment is an important avenue for Turner to participate in the rapid growth of one of the region-leading digital entertainment company, reach new audiences, and extend its existing partnership with POPS. Turner launched its Boomerang brand in Vietnam in April 2016 on POPS Kids.
“With its unique proposition, POPS has shown to be very adept at attracting and engaging audiences with its local content and creator network, and this agreement allows Turner to venture into this growing side of the business,” said Ricky Ow, President of Turner Asia Pacific.
“Our investment is part of Turner’s desire to place fans and consumers at the very core – to reach and engage them with branded content and playlists – as well as target diverse demographics in new ways. With a surge of video-on-demand viewing in both Vietnam and Southeast Asia, these are exciting times for two companies that share a very similar culture of innovation.”
Since launching in 2011, POPS has doubled its annual views each year, recently passing 40 billion lifetime views. It boasts more than 2 billion monthly views, 32 million YouTube subscribers, 1,210 channels and 4 million social media fans. In addition to managing a network of partner channels, POPS operates a number of branded premium channels, including POPS Kids (1.4M subscribers) and POPS Music. The network recently expanded to DailyMotion and Facebook, as well as a mobile POPS Kids app.
“We are excited to have Turner come on board. Using this investment, we can supercharge our ambitious vision to lead digital entertainment in Southeast Asia. We plan to expand our network onto more mobile and non-traditional platforms, invest heavily in content production and open new markets. Over the past year, we have been working closely with Turner on their Kids content,” added POPS founder & CEO Esther Nguyen.
“Through this journey, we realised that we share the same vision of the future of entertainment. Our work with Turner led to the successful YouTube launch of Boomerang Vietnam and popular Boomerang programming on POPS Kids. For the first time in Vietnam, full episodes of classic properties like Tom and Jerry, Ben 10, The Powerpuff Girls and Scooby-Doo were available for our audiences online. Though we started working together in the Kids business, we now look forward to broadening our content partnership even wider.”
