TNL Media Group, a Taiwan-based multi-language media and data platform, has acquired food and recipe lifestyle media iCook for an undisclosed amount, marking its entry into e-commerce.
The deal aims to grow TNL Media’s readership, launch new products, and expand the group’s paid subscription business.
The group will leverage iCook’s experiences to integrate its current e-commerce services with other suitable media brands internally. The group also plans to connect the new app, membership and e-commerce transaction data to its other existing digital products and services.
The objective is to enhance TNL Meda Group’s data analytic capabilities, unify data across all media brands, and connect with the data sources from the group’s mobile ad tech company Ad2iction. Besides, it will look to grow its big data market research firm TNL Research and AI CDP and data exchange company DaEX.
Also Read: YouTube, Twitch co-founders invest in Taiwanese news site The News Lens
Group Chief Content Officer and Co-Founder Mario Yang said: “TNL looks forward to helping iCook’s direct media sales, social media expansion, launching new video and audio products and giving more international exposure.”
TNL Media is a leading digital advertising, data analytics, and media platform. It runs Mandarin, English, and Japanese editions. The group has nine content brands and eleven subsidiaries, including The News Lens, INSIDE, Sports Vision, Cool3c , every little d, Agent Movie, OHSOWOW, and Business Yee.
With 7 million monthly unique visitors (MUV), the integration with iCook will bring TNL Media’s total reader scale to 25 million MUV and 100 million monthly page views.
The media group’s existing high-profile investors include North Base Media, an original seed investor in The News Lens, YouTube Co-Founder Steve Chen, Twitch Co-Founder Kevin Lin, and Tim Draper.
Also Read: Taiwan’s TNL Media Group ropes in Tim Draper as an investor
Operated by Polydice, Inc, iCook is a leading recipe-sharing social platform in Taiwan and Hong Kong, with more than 250,000 recipes, 3 million registered members, and 7 million monthly unique active users. Beyond recipes, the platform also provides content about food, cooking, life tips, and general health/living knowledge in several formats, such as blog posts, videos, and other rich experiences.
Its gross merchandise volume grew 40 per cent annually amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. It also has one of the largest app downloads amongst media brands, with over 6 million and a paid subscriber base of close to 15,000.
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