Merzigo is a technology-based video monetization and digital distribution company for content rights owners, production houses and broadcasters. With almost 40% of the market in Turkey, the company is expanding quickly all over the MENA and APAC markets while it targets other international markets.
Yigit Dogan Celik, Chairman, explained to Prensario: ‘We have been in the market for 4 years and in the last 2 years, we have been focusing on the technology side of the business to maximize the income, reach wider audiences and optimize the efficiency of our operations. We have been developing several tools to speed up AVOD monetization processes, anti-pirating software to protect our clients’ content and other efficiency monitoring software for in-house purposes. The platforms we are globally monetizing on are Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. We are also currently working on the launch of our AVOD platform, BAŞLAT, in Turkey soon’.
Merzigo distributes top channels as Survivor Turkey, The Voice Turkey, Turkey Got Talent, FOX TV in Turkey and globally published Turkish series such as El Sultan(Magnificent Century), El Poder del Amor and various international series channels launched in India and from Spain we signed a deal to monetize RTVE series.
One of its recent deals includes a new one with Fremantle for a raft of scripted series that will launch on Merzigo owned and operated social media channel, as well as on its OTT which will be launched this year.
‘We also took over the management of some of Turkey’s leading Free TV channels, multiplying their revenues per year by 10 fold during our first year. We are providing content in the following languages: Turkish, Spanish, Arabic, Romanian, Portuguese, English, French, Serbian, Italian, Urdu, Hindi, German and Polish. You can say that we are present wherever YouTube is present’, added Dogan Celik.
The executive continued: ‘We work with two different models; acquiring content directly and / or channel management. Upon acquiring content, we focus on launching theme-based channels and vertical channels dedicated to a specific show. On the channels, we provide new content on a strictly regular basis to draw and to keep the attention of our viewers’.
‘We understand the importance of consistency and run our operations accordingly. Within this, upon taking over already-existing channels we first look at the short-comings and form our strategy. These strategies greatly vary from content to content, so it is difficult to give a precise answer. We are versatile and adapt however necessary to optimize the content. Regarding the revenue models, we can offer flat fee acquisition deals or revenue share models depending on the content’.
And Dogan Celik concluded: ‘The monetization of premium content on AVOD platforms is rapidly increasing while the digital competition among SVOD platforms in Turkey increases with new players entering the market, increasing the production budgets and costs. This also creates a variety of new opportunities for talents, content creators and producers’.
‘Though this may lead to tougher competition in the Turkish market, I don’t believe it puts us in a difficult position since our target audience is larger and our content strategy is different than SVOD platforms. So, we can explore new areas they may not reach. As most of the FreeTV talents will move to digital for reasons I mentioned earlier, Free TVs will have to discover new talent and faces. Our business model lets us remain unaffected from this situation while also reaping its benefits’.
