RTL interactive

Logo from RTL interactive

The RTL interactive GmbH is a subsidiary of the TV station RTL Television , based in Cologne and also part of the media group RTL Group . Under the umbrella of RTL interactive GmbH, RTL Television bundles interactive and transaction-based business areas beyond traditional, advertising-financed, free-to-air television.

Business areas

The business areas of RTL interactive include online, mobile, teletext , media services ( value-added telephone services ), licensing and games publishing.

In addition, the development of new business models is one of the core tasks of RTL interactive. In August 2006 , RTL interactive was the first German TV company to create its own video community with Clipfish . At the beginning of 2007 the video-on-demand portal RTLNOW , produced by RTL interactive, started , which had 23.1 million views per month in 2011, followed by VOXNOW in July 2009, SUPER RTL NOW on August 24, 2010 and RTL 2 on February 2, 2012 NOW . Parallel to the start of broadcasting RTL Nitro on April 1, 2012, RTL interactive is also offering RTL NITRO NOW .

In total, all of RTL interactive's video portals had 118.1 million video views in March 2012. In April 2012, the number of video views was 116.8 million.

Online area

Logo of RTL.de since December 2018

RTL interactive operates a number of large online audience sites in the online area. In addition to the infotainment portal RTL.de, it operates the broadcast portals VOX.de, GZSZ.de, VIP.de, sport.de and Telebörse.de. Like its competitor ProSiebenSat.1 , the RTL Group also operates a video clip portal. The ProSiebenSat.1 offer is called MyVideo , the RTL Group's offer was called Clipfish , and in 2017 the name was changed to Watchbox . In terms of content, these two video portals are similar. Private videos as well as official music videos and even feature films and also some series episodes can be accessed legally and free of charge. With the portals kochbar.de, Frauenzimmer.de and who-knows-wen .de (February 2008 – June 2014) online communities are also part of RTL interactive. With the takeover of Smart Shopping and Saving GmbH (formerly Gutscheine.de HSS GmbH), Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland is expanding its internet business activities in the direction of online couponing with this subsidiary and acquiring Gutscheine.de, one of the largest voucher portals in Germany. Due to the expansion of the Berlin subsidiary, since 2013 u. a. the Swiss portal Voucher.ch and the offer portal Sonderangebote.de for the repertoire of RTL interactive. In September 2014, RTL interactive expanded its online couponing activities by purchasing SPARWELT GmbH (formerly ECONA Shopping GmbH). SPARWELT GmbH includes Sparwelt.de, an editorial shopping guide and voucher portal that is the market leader in Germany in the area of online couponing. In addition, SPARWELT GmbH, together with Deutsche Telekom / T-Online, also operates Deals.de, a portal on which consumers can find free discount vouchers. In the gaming area, RTL interactive with the portals RTLspiele.de and GAMECHANNEL.de offers browser games and other entertainment options .

With around 63 million unique visits a month , RTL.de is one of the most popular German sites on the Internet. The pages of the NOW family recorded around 247 million video views in 2011.

On March 28, 2014, RTL interactive announced that it wanted to part with werwissenwen. The company justified the step with massive loss of reach of the portal. Initially, potential investors were sought. As is the case with other social platforms, the massive loss of users of werwissenwen is mainly due to the success of the American online network Facebook.

At the beginning of May 2014, RTL interactive officially announced that the network would be discontinued on June 2, 2014. 40 employees are affected by the closure of the platform.

In 2015, RTL interactive started producing the comedy format Comedy Rocket , which had over 230 million viewers on Facebook alone .

Video on demand

The activities of RTL interactive GmbH also include video-on-demand . These include u. a. the portals RTLnow, VOXnow, SuperRTLnow, RTL2now, RTLNitronow and N-TVnow. The video-on-demand offers of the German-speaking RTL broadcasters are made up of the name of the television broadcaster and the English word “now”, which means as much as now, today, in relation to RTL's entertainment . Together, the individual areas form the TVNOW portal .

Business data and management

The diversification business generates around 15 percent of the total revenue of Mediengruppe RTL. From August 15, 2008, the managing director was Marc Schröder, who ran RTL interactive until May 2017. Jan Wachtel will take over this task from May 2017.