Catcha Digital gets off the mark

• Catcha Digital shows encouraging early signs
• Is a local partnership between Microsoft and Catcha Media Group
• Magazine business resilient
  

Malaysia - Catcha Digital, a company formed locally out of a partnership between Microsoft and Catcha Media Group, has made an encouraging start to its second month of operations with August revenues already up by 40% compared to July.

The high profile partnership between Catcha, Malaysia's biggest publisher of English titles, and tech giant Microsoft works with Catcha Digital now able to leverage on the online sales and content development rights of the publisher's 20 titles as well as Microsoft's online properties including Bing and Windows Live Messenger.

Still, Catcha Media Group CEO, Patrick Grove told Advertising + Marketing that the publisher has no plans to eventually phase out print magazines and shift brands to a paperless experience

He said even in developed markets where online adex figures have reached 15%, magazines, although there are less of them, are still in a healthy place.

Magazines under Catcha Media Group include Juice, Stuff, FourFourTwo, and Clive

"You can't take magazine content and just place it online - it doesn't work that way," Microsoft managing director for SE Asia, Mark Inkster, said.

Nielsen adex figures for the first six months of 2009 showed a year-on-year increase of 11.7% for online while magazine spend dropped 11.2%.

Both Catcha's Grove and Microsoft's Inkster declined to reveal how many staff Catcha Digital has hired although it is known the majority are sales related.

Before the partnership, Microsoft used to engage agencies to sell advertising for the Malaysia market.