MDC.L Share News (MDC)

Online advertising and gambling group Media Corp expects losses in the year to 30 September to be narrower than those of the previous year after seeing sharp increases in revenues in both divisions.Total revenues climbed to £35m from £24m, with advertising division Eyeconomy's climbing to £7.3m from £2.8m and gambling division Purple Lounge's to £27.5m from £21.3m."Growth should continue as we add new publishers and advertisers to Eyeconomy's fast growing advertising network," said chief executive Justin Drummond."Purple Lounge has had another strong year against industry wide declines in online gaming revenues."He told ShareCast that the company is in acquisition talks as it looks to expand both the poker and casino operations of its online gambling business. He said that scale is key to the casino business in order to avoid wide fluctuations caused by varying levels of wins and losses and that it is important to have a large pool of poker players.The rationale for Eyeconomy and Purple Lounge being part of the same company is that marketing is a key component of online gambling businesses, he said.Eyeconomy is also involved in marketing functions not related to gambling, such as organising the advertising for the Express newspapers. ---RG