Discovery Communications has bought a minority stake in Ivy Wong’s VS Media, a leading multi channel network in Greater China.
The three-year old company represents 500 online creators, more than 55 million subscribers and 320 million video views a month. Last month CMC Holdings, part of China Media Capital also bought shares in the company.
VS says it “empowers creators by providing production facilities and funding, offering direction and support for cross-marketing, social media and search optimization to enable monetization opportunities.”
It is currently setting up a $4million content development fund which will be used to collaborate with creators to produce local formats. The fund allows creators to pitch original content ideas with potential for multi-platform franchises. These may be produced for VS Media’s consumer brand, VS ME.
"I admire the strong community spirit Ivy has fostered with local creators and their followers. As Discovery looks to build deeper traction in the Chinese-speaking markets, VS Media’s robust following is incredibly valuable to us. Through their advanced analytics, we can get fully plugged in to the Chinese millennial zeitgeist,” said Arthur Bastings, president and MD of Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific.
Wong is a new media veteran once credited as the first Hong Kong employee of Yahoo!. She has since been involved with companies including TVB.com, HMVideal and Next Mobile.