The Hindu Business Line : Turner plans additional revenues through online space

“Work is in progress and we are evaluating the possibility of e-commerce. Once there is enough stickiness on the site, it could become genuine opportunity,” said Ms Monica Tata, Vice-President and Deputy General Manager, Turner South Asia. Currently, its online sites of Cartoon Network and Pogo have a user base of 4 lakh visitors who mainly watch it for its gaming attractions.

Considering ad revenues from the sites contribute less than 10 per cent, Turner is now interested in making it an attractive revenue generating model for the company.

As Ms Tata said, “We are expecting growth in revenues from the online space and are putting people and resources behind it to complement our on-air shows. The online space has the potential model to become an economic service.”

Commanding a 45 per cent channel share in the kids’ genre, Turner with its two channels – Cartoon Network and Pogo – expect ad revenues to grow over 10 per cent next year.

Double digit growth

“It is challenging environment but we have been getting double digit growth in ad revenues year on year at 11 per cent,” claimed Ms Tata.

In fact, non-traditional advertisers, especially from the FMCG category, have contributed to 29 per cent growth in ad revenues on a year-on-year basis.

“Our non-traditional ad base has been growing with FMCG players like ITC and P&G. However, there has been a slowdown in categories like automobiles, banking and finance. It is a challenging environment and we have to adopt an out of the box approach for our advertisers in the coming year,” added Ms Tata claiming to have the largest share in the ad pie in the kids’ genre.

Besides, the channels have also explored other mediums which include on ground initiatives and merchandising to build their franchise in the country.

With the Indian operations contributing 40 per cent of revenues from the region to the parent company, Turner International is now increasing its focus on the subcontinent.

“Two new channels will be launched next year and we intend launching them both simultaneously,” says Ms Tata. A new Hindi GEC and another English Movie channel (apart from HBO) would soon get added to its bouquet.

Besides, it would also be entering the area of film production and is currently in the process of identifying projects for the same.

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