Turner Asia Pacific Makes Vietnamese Investment

POPS Worldwide, a digital media and creator network in Vietnam, has picked up an investment from Turner Asia Pacific.

POPS launched its digital video network business in 2011 and today counts more than 2 billion monthly views over 1,210 channels. Turner has taken a significant minority stake in the company, with which it has been aligned since 2016—POPS Kids’ nonlinear platforms carry Boomerang.

“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, the 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.”

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 realized 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.”