[by Cerius Shah] Turner has tied-up with Outblaze for a joint venture in Asia called TurnOut, which will create online communities for Cartoon Network portals. Outblaze, according to this Agencyfaqs article, is apparently powering the community features on CN’s Indian website as well. Most deep links on the site however use the cartoonetworkhq.com database. Infact, it would be hard to spot the template differences between the two.

According to the press release, Vivek Krishnani, Executive Director, Marketing, Turner Asia Pacific says that advertisers can now add online to the campaign bundle with options such as pre-rolls in video streaming, pre-game TVC insertions, interactive rich media advertising solutions (expandable banners, floating ads and page overlays), branded microsites, branded E-Cards, advergaming and user-generated content. Reckon they are planning to sell it as a bundle with the on-air commercial time. The site ranks 694 on Alexa with around 70% traffic coming from India. The menu bar is relegated to a blog platform, forums, a studio, video and games. Considering CN is targeted towards children and Pogo towards the adolescents, wonder what kids would blog about?

Overall more of a cosmetic makeover for CNIndia. While it looks great, it’s essentially a version ported with little else besides different show timings and similar content as the international landing page.