Rev Asia acquires a 25% stake in Chinese news portal TanTanNews

Media Prima Digital’s wholly-owned subsidiary, REV Asia Holdings has acquired a 25% stake in the owner and publisher of Chinese social news portal TanTanNews, Monster Scape. As part of the deal, REV Asia will be representing the online news portal as the “Exclusive Advertising Reselling” partner. Sean Teoh, founder of TanTanNews , said this partnership will enable the news portal to help more advertisers reach out to its audience, while also leveraging on Media Prima Digital's platforms to build more creative contents. He added that this partnership will also allow the news portal to focus on its technology for building more innovative products to serve all users across Media Prima Digital and TanTanNews. According to Voon Tze Khay, managing director of REV Asia, the acquisition of TanTanNews will further strengthen REV Asia’s dominant position in the millennial Chinese-speaking online community, and enable it to expand to users in the social news and entertainment segments. He added that Rev Asia’s, which claims to be the pioneer and leader in providing sponsored content solutions to advertisers in Malaysia, addition of TanTanNews will allow the company to scale at a rapid pace in helping potential advertisers reach out to the younger Chinese market inclined to reading news content. Moreover, in addition to sponsored content, REV Asia will also extend its small and medium enterprise content offerings to TanTanNews. “We are excited to welcome TanTanNews to our Chinese language network. We are confident that this will solidify Media Prima Group’s position as the largest local digital media company in Malaysia as there is a huge demand for Chinese-language content from our audiences and advertisers. Given the popularity of TanTanNews among Chinese Millennials and REV Asia’s expertise in providing sponsored content solutions, we see this as a sustainable solution to generate greater revenue,” Rafiq Razali, chief executive officer of Media Prima Digital said. “We have also recently introduced Digital Ads Re-targeting via Sponsored Content, which will be extended to our Chinese language network. Moving forward, we will continue to look out for strategic acquisitions and partnerships that will drive growth for the group in the digital segment, as well as complement our core businesses,” he added. Launched in 2013, TanTanNews which primarily focuses on the latest news and trends on entertainment, travel, fashion, and lifestyle, has grown into a prominent brand and source for many visitors from Malaysia and across the region.  According to Google Analytics, TanTanNews recorded a total of 2.8 million page views and one million users in November 2018. Meanwhile, REV Asia has a combined following of 8.4 million average unique visitors according to Google Analytics. Its portfolio of online brands include SAYS , OhBulan! , RojakLah , Viral Cham , 8coin , Sirap Limau , MyResipi , Kongsi Resepi , JUICE, and its most recent addition, Mashable Southeast Asia.  Media Prima’s digital revenue increased to RM64.3 million for the nine months financial period ended 30 September 2018 from RM28.0 million in the comparative period. This was said to reflect the positive progress of the Media Prima’s business transformation plan, driven by strategies which include accelerating digital advertising revenue and monetisation opportunities.