【Press Release】TNL Media Group welcomes Tim Draper as its latest investor; also launches its newest 7th media brand and the next wave of data and mobile ad tech products

TAIPEI, Taiwan (22 Dec., 2021)—TNL Media Group, an independent Taiwan-based multi-language media and data platform with 18 M monthly unique readers internationally has announced that world-renowned Silicon Valley venture capitalist, Tim Draper, has just joined as its latest institutional investor through his fund Draper Associates VI, L.P. Draper’s previous high profile investments include Skype, Tesla and SpaceX. TNL is the fund’s first direct investment into a Taiwan company.   

Draper’s Draper Associates VI, L.P. is TNL’s latest new investor following the close of their last round end of last year. Notable international investors from that round include the New York based VC firm Palm Drive as well as new investors Kai Huang, co-founder of Guitar Hero and XRM Media, an independent US based entertainment and media technology conglomerate.

“With China’s President abandoning the free markets and business, we are seeing an influx of great entrepreneurs to Taiwan and other parts of SE Asia,” said Tim Draper, Founder of Draper Associates. “An honest, fair media site, combined with data analytics and artificial intelligence, could be the next development in media. Additionally, the demographics of the 18 million monthly uniques in TNL is the sweet spot for early-stage entrepreneurs. We expect TNL to grow rapidly.”

TNL intends to use the proceeds from that last round to continue growing their media presence and offer more new verticals throughout Asia as well as investing in their data analytic capabilities. They aim to unify their data across all media brands and create synergies across content, ad tech and data analytics products. CEO and Co-Founder Joey Chung says, “We are extremely excited to have Tim join us, bringing with him more than 35 years of global venture experience, connections and unique insight in helping companies grow and go global. We look forward to working closely with Tim and his team as we continue our focus to expand internationally and acquire suitable content, ad tech and data companies across Asia while delivering independent, valuable content to our readers.”    

Furthermore, TNL also announced the successful launch of their newest media brand, their 7^th, named Ohsowow (https://ohsowow.agentm.tw/) that will mainly focus on Korean entertainment, culture, and lifestyle content. Ohsowow was successfully spun off of their original movie media Agent M in October due the recent strong demand for Korean related entertainment coverage and is already rapidly growing, projected to reach 1 M monthly unique readers by end of the first  year. Ohsowow aims to be the go to media platform within the international Chinese-language market for all high quality Korean entertainment and lifestyle reporting.      

TNL has anchored it's recent expansion strategy on mastering a positive cycle of acquiring unique data, leveraging that data to produce high value content and in turn, increase audience stickiness and attract more readers. Tatt Chen who leads TNL Research said "The cycle of getting permission to intimately understand our audience, decoding their psyche/attitudes/digital journey, personalizing content/message to their unmet needs and finally sharing with more people with similar needs is something we all do consciously or unconsciously. TNL differentiation is the ability to capture and combine these high value data streams at scale, learning from it to optimize content/message to engage others via MarTech/AI". To this effort, TNL will continue to invest into bolstering TNL Group's holistic data ecosystem; Ranging from our zero party data products via (permission based, PDPA compliant) mobile passive tracking panel - Engagement Lab, research panel - ShareParty, first party data from TNLs' media brands, and integration with second and third party data via MarTech/AI.

Ad2iction, the MarTech company which belongs to TNL Group, recently launched their CEDP- “Content Engagement Data Platform”, integrating all the traffic and data from seven media platforms of TNL. CEDP analyzes over 18M unique visitors’ digital footprints and 100M content engagement data per month, providing an efficient data marketing solution to achieve higher CTR and lower CPC effectively.

Furthermore, according to Comscore Display Ad Ecosystem metrics of Oct. 2021, Ad2’s ad network achieved  99.7% reach of mobile users. Combined with the CEDP data, TNL Group becomes one of the top ad-tech and media data platforms in Taiwan.

TNL Media Group now has a staff of over 230 and plans to continue expanding its readership size, international presence, strategic data partnerships and new technological capabilities. It’s existing media brands now include The News Lens, INSIDE, Sports Vision, Cool3c, every little d, Agent Movie, and Ohsowow .

For more information, please contact

Street Hung

Email：street.hung@thenewslens.com

About TNL Media Group

TNL Group is one of the fastest-growing media, digital advertising, and data analytics platforms for the Asian market.

TNL was launched in both Mandarin and English editions to provide inclusive, in-depth, diverse, and highly influential content for digital readers. 

It has since expanded and acquired a mobile ad network, big data research company, and launched a data analytics platform. As a result, the group can effectively grasp user information through zero-party, first-party, third-party databases, AI analysis, Martech, and other cross-domain core products.

TNL serves the public with news and informed commentary, empowers brands with data, and connects with technology, becoming an essential partner for the digital transformation needs of enterprises.

TNL Group consists of seven content brands and ten subsidiaries, with over 230 staff members in Taipei, Hong Kong, and Japan. TNL Media Group’s existing high-profile investors include North Base Media, an original seed investor in The News Lens, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, and Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin.

For more information, please visit the Group's website: https://www.tnlmedia.com/ .

About Draper Associates:

Founded in1985 by Tim Draper, Draper Associates is the leader in early-stage venture capital that continues to invest in technology companies that show exceptional promise. 

The firm's investments have included Coinbase, Baidu, Tesla, Skype, SpaceX, Twitch, Hotmail, Focus Media, Robinhood, Carta, and other industry unicorns at the early stage. Draper Associates has built a reputation for encouraging entrepreneurs to drive their businesses to greatness, to transform industries with new technologies, and to build platforms for extraordinary growth, jobs and wealth creation. 

Send plans to plans@draper.vc. To learn more, visit www.draper.vc.