Irish digital marketing supremo Dylan Collins' SuperAwesome Asia is the biggest kids ad platform in Southeast Asia
Dylan Collins’ digital marketing empire in Asia reaches more than 90m kids every month and is now moving into short-form content.
The platform, which works with brands like Lego, Warner, Hasbro and Nintendo, is now the biggest kids ad platform in Asia, and Collins told SiliconRepublic.com that the move is in keeping with the shift away from TV to small-screen experiences like Snapchat and PopJam.
SuperAwesome is understood to be establishing several dedicated video content studios to serve markets like Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
‘If you look at the population pyramid of countries like Indonesia, they have a much larger percentage of young people than most western countries’
– DYLAN COLLINS, SUPERAWESOME
Collins founded SuperAwesome in 2012 to develop kid-friendly marketing on behalf of major kids brands like Disney and Nickelodeon. The network has been growing steadily around the world and two years ago it expanded into the US after acquiring Mobigirl Media, a mobile ad network for girls based in LA.
Collins is one of Ireland’s most successful entrepreneurs, embarking on his start-up career while at Trinity College Dublin with Phorest, which is still in business today, and games middleware firm Demonware, which is also still active. Activision acquired Demonware in 2007 for an estimated $15m.
Serving the centennials
Dylan Collins, founder of global digital marketing platform SuperAwesome, which helps brands like Disney and Warner reach youth markets in the US, Europe and Asia
In response to questions about the move into short-form content, Collins explained: “This new generation of kids – the centennials – has grown up with tablets, smartphones etc. Although they still watch TV, their first content experiences has often been YouTube or something similar. As they get older, it becomes PopJam, Snapchat etc. Screen-size typically dictates shorter content length, which is why you’re seeing one-to-five-minutes becoming so much more popular with the under-13 audience.
Collins said that SuperAwesome’s investment in Asia, along with Inspire Ventures, is predicated on the rapidly-growing young population in Asia and the digital-first mentality of kids in the region.
“If you look at the population pyramid of countries like Indonesia, they have a much larger percentage of young people than most western countries.”
Collins also said that there is a lack of investment in the kids sector in terms of media and marketing.
“This tends to be a global issue that we also see in the US and UK markets. It’s a market that requires a lot of expertise, not easily available.
“SuperAwesome Asia is now the biggest kids ad platform in south-east Asia. We’ve basically created the category of 100pc kid-safe digital advertising and today our platform reaches almost 90m kids each month. The opportunity to expand this into content is simply huge,” Collins said.
Kid with smartphone image via Shutterstock
