Given that introducing in 2013, Taipei-based TNL Media Group has actually grown from an independent news website to a media business with several online publishing verticals and an information analytics organisation. The business, formerly called The News Lens, revealed today that it has actually raised $8 million from New York-based financial investment firm Palm Drive Capital, as part of its Series D round.
TNL Media Group’s last funding statement was a Series C round revealed two years ago. Co-founder and ceo Joey Chung informed TechCrunch that its latest infusion of funding will be utilized to include more media verticals, continue TNL Media Group’s international growth and complete its current pipeline of data analytics and tech service items.
TNL Media Group’s previous investors include North Base Media, the firm co-founded by Washington Post and Wall Street Journal seasoned Marcus Brauchli (who is also a member of the start-up’s board). The News Lens launched seven years earlier as a multilingual website to give millennial readers an alternative to traditional media outlets in Taiwan, where coverage is frequently sharply divided along political lines and traffic is driven by celeb chatter and other tabloid fodder.
Previously this year, TNL Media Group obtained Taiwanese mobile advertisement innovation startup Ad2iction, a cloud-based platform for brand names to manage and produce digital advertisements.
Because TNL Media Group currently has workplaces in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and likewise has a media vertical committed to covering Southeast Asia, Chung stated the company is now looking for chances to broaden there. At the same time, he added that TNL Media Group has “had various really late-stage discussions” about collaborations to launch in Japan.
The business’s media verticals match its information analytics business since it has the ability to draw on TNL Media Group’s user base for data, which Chung stated is “among the biggest readership pools for digital audiences in the higher China market.”
Typically, TNL Media Group’s sites have around 14 million month-to-month distinct users. Its data analytics company, which launched within the previous year, currently has about three to five customers each month. “However of course, we are preparing for that to be increase significantly in the coming months and years, and that will gradually grow to become an extremely fundamental part of our entire company portfolio,” Chung stated.
TNL Media Group’s other items include mobile ad tech, digital ticketing services, online events and online classes, and a content management system (CMS) it will start accrediting to other business.
Chung stated that by the end of this year, much of these products will be incorporated with its readership and information to establish a demand-side platform (DSP, a tool that links ad purchasers with publishers) and a data management platform that are currently in production.
In a press statement about its investment in TNL Media Group, Palm Drive Capital managing partner Nick Hsu stated, “Palm Drive Capital concentrates on investing in international innovation startups utilizing software to transform traditional markets. This is evident in the media industry, especially as Taiwan’s online advertisement expense has actually already reached over one billion U.S. dollars and is estimated to grow to 1.65 billion U.S. dollars by2021 Having actually understood the TNL Media Group group for many years, we see huge potential to utilize information to drive development, consolidation, and worldwide expansion in the media market.”
TechCrunch.
