Turner Asia Pacific has announced an investment in POPS Worldwide (POPS) which sees Turner take a significant minority stake in the leading Vietnamese digital media and creator network. This investment represents an opportunity for Turner to participate in the rapid growth of one of Asia's most successful digital entertainment companies, reaching new audiences and further extending its existing partnership with POPS. Turner's Boomerang brand launched in Vietnam in April 2016 on POPS Kids non-linear platforms - offering kids some of the best-loved international animations dubbed in Vietnamese.
"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," commented Ricky Ow, President of Turner Asia Pacific.
He added: "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 its digital video network business in late 2011, POPS has doubled its annual views each year and recently surpassed 40 billion lifetime views. Other key performance highlights include:
· Monthly views: more than 2 billion
·
Youtube network subscribers: 32 million
· Channels under management: 1,210
· Lifetime watch-hours: 4 billion
· Social media fans across Facebook, Instagram and Zalo: 4 million
(accurate as of June 14, 2017)
Esther Nguyen, Founder and CEO of POPS Worldwide, added: "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.
"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."
In addition to actively managing a strong partner channel network, POPS operates a slate of branded premium channels. The POPS team created and manages Vietnam's top
Youtube channel, POPS Music, (3.3m subscribers, 3.6b lifetime views) and Vietnam's top edutainment channel, POPS Kids, (1.4m subscribers, 1.7b lifetime views). Most recently, POPS expanded its video network reach to include Daily Motion and Facebook, as well as launching a new POPS Kids app for mobile users.
Working with over 1,700 content partners on over 1,200 network channels, POPS has successfully partnered with domestic, regional and international content partners. With a proven expertise in launching content locally in Vietnam, POPS has content partners that include digitally-savvy musicians, entertainers and comedians as well as traditional TV studios, local and regional production houses and media companies including Discovery Networks, UUUM, Digital Hollywood and Collab.
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