ABS-CBN continues to widen digital footprint

MANILA, Philippines — ABS-CBN Corp’s digital pivot as a content company continues to gain traction following the non-renewal of its broadcast franchise last year.

ABS-CBN head of digital Jamie Lopez said the company’s digital footprint has been growing as it focuses on serving audiences worldwide as a content company.

“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 said ABS-CBN remains dominant on both YouTube and Facebook, and continues to enjoy gains on its sites and its own over-the-top 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 four million,” Lopez said.

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.

For its part, ABS-CBN News, also made great strides in its digital transformation to reach more audiences online and around the globe, with the news website generating 1.1 billion page views and attracting more than 220 million active users in 2020.

Apart from Facebook, YouTube, and iWantTFC, Lopez said ABS-CBN has also partnered with the likes of WeTV, iFlix, Netflix, Kumu, Spotify, and PDN to expand the reach and availability of its content.

ABS-CBN has harnessed new technologies in production and quickly put in place safety protocols in the past year 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,” ABS-CBN Film Productions Inc. managing director Olivia Lamasan said.

Lamasan said unlike before when they would limit the distribution on ABS-CBN owned platforms, the 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 said.