ABS-CBN head of digital Jamie Lopez offered a snapshot of the growing digital presence of ABS-CBN, which has become primarily a content company after the nonrenewal of its broadcast franchise in 2020.
ABS-CBN’s Kapamilya Online Live on YT and FB register up to 15 million views a day
ABS-CBN continues to widen its digital footprint as it focuses on serving audiences worldwide as a content company.
ABS-CBN head of digital Jamie Lopez offered a snapshot of the growing digital presence of ABS-CBN, which has become primarily a content company after the nonrenewal of its broadcast franchise in 2020.
“In the Philippines, 40 million people visit YouTube daily and we account for 10 million of those Daily Active Users who consistently deliver over a billion impressions a month, 1.34 billion in August,” Lopez said.
He added that ABS-CBN remains dominant on both YouTube and Facebook, and continues to enjoy gains on its sites and its own OTT platform iWantTFC.
“Our Entertainment channel is the largest in Southeast Asia with 36.4 million subscribers. We have 112 million followers in Facebook, 13.5 million monthly actives across our websites, and we continuously see growth month on month for iWantTFC, which as of last month was 4 million.”
ABS-CBN’s Kapamilya Online Live, which offers ABS-CBN programming from morning to evening on Facebook and YouTube, also averages 10 million to 15 million views every day according to ABS-CBN digital content publishing head Richard Reynante.
ABS-CBN News has also made great strides in its digital transformation to reach more audiences online and around the globe. ABS-CBN News Digital head Lynda Jumilla said their news website generated 1.1 billion page views and attracted more than 220 million active users amid the challenges in 2020.
It remains the biggest Philippine news organization on Facebook with 22 million followers on their main page, and 17 million on three other ABS-CBN News pages, and on YouTube, where it already has 13 million subscribers on the main channel. It has also been producing made-for-digital video stories, podcasts, and recently launched its official account on TikTok.
Apart from Facebook, YouTube, and iWantTFC, Lopez said they have also partnered with the likes of WeTV iFlix, Netflix, Kumu, Spotify, and PDN to reach more people from all over the world to share the stories of Filipinos and promote Filipino talent on the global stage.
Lopez said the game plan of ABS-CBN is simple, and that is to “to tell the most meaningful stories and to tell them to as many people as possible.”
In the past year, the 68-year old company harnessed new technologies in production and quickly put in place safety protocols to ensure the well-being of its artists, staff, and crew while it continued to create new shows and films during the pandemic.
“We just couldn’t sit there and wait. And we felt that we had to do something to reconnect with our audience. We had to make our presence felt,” said ABS-CBN Film Productions Inc. managing director Olivia Lamasan, whose group was behind hits “The House Arrest of Us,” “Hello Stranger,” and “He’s Into Her” that were all produced and released during the pandemic.
Lamasan noted that unlike before when they would limit the distribution on ABS-CBN owned platforms, the decades-old company is now more open to collaborations and partnerships.
“Without theatrical, without our own broadcast platform, we have evolved into being primarily a content company, providing content even to outside platforms, productions, and partners,” she shared.
Lamasan said the main idea is to make available good content, which still carries the ABS-CBN brand and values, to audiences who want them.
“In that way, I’d like to believe that we are able to fulfill our commitment as ABS-CBN, in the service of the Filipino, and ABS-CBN in the service of audiences worldwide,” she said.