MUMBAI: CNN is banking on India to boost its ad revenue this year as the international news outfit hunts for fast-growing economies in a downturn environment.

CNN expects a 10 per cent growth from the Asia Pacific region. “India, away from recession, will grow the fastest this year as we tap into more clients. North Asia’s contribution in terms of Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong will still be the most. The growth in Asia will be faster compared to the US which was also the case last year,” says CNN vice president ad sales Asia Pacific William Hsu.
CNN International’s top three markets in the Asia Pacific region are Korea, Southeast Asia and India. CNN has 20 Indian advertisers and plans to widen this pool. “A lot of Indian companies are going global. They look at our network for advertising,” says Hsu.

CNN has been growing at about 11 per cent compounded a year over the last decade. “The recession affected us the least. We anticipated the recession before it happened. Throughout 2007, we expected something to happen without knowing when. This allowed us to tweak our strategy. We approached more governments as they tend to up their spends during a recession to stimulate growth. We also built a 360 degree solution around TV and the Internet,” adds Hsu.
 
The focus on digital, which makes up 20 per cent of CNN’s revenues, also helped the news network to combat the global downturn.
 
CNN is growing its India content. “Eye On India is coming up and we are promoting it. We are dedicating a lot of our daily news output towards Indian business, which will be aired across the world,” says Hsu.