Tuesday, November 27, 2007

12:37 AM

Friday, November 09, 2007

MULTIPLY AND ABS-CBN ANNOUNCE MULTI-YEAR ADVERTISING AND REVENUE-SHARING AGREEMENT

Fifth Largest Website Joins Forces with Number One Television and Radio Network to Capitalize On Growing Online Ad Market

Boca Raton, FL, November 7, 2007 - Social networking and media-sharing site Multiply (http://multiply.com) and ABS-CBNi, the interactive division of Filipino television giant ABS-CBN, today announce a multi-year, strategic advertising agreement. Under terms of the agreement, ABS-CBNi will sell advertising and mobile services for Multiply's Filipino users, with the two companies sharing revenues in the rapidly developing regional market. The partnership allows Multiply to monetize a significant portion of its traffic while still retaining a primary focus on product development and global customer acquisition.

Multiply has experienced breakneck growth, nearly tripling its traffic in 2007. It now has 7 million registered users and 10.5 million monthly unique visitors. Multiply is also one of the largest multi-media sharing websites in the world, with more than 1.25 million photos, 16 thousand videos and 55 thousand blog entries posted daily. Alexa ranks Multiply as the 5th largest site in the Philippines - with more than 2 million unique monthly visitors - ahead of larger sites such as MySpace and FaceBook.

According to research firm Datamonitor Plc., by the end of this year, Asia will account for 35% of the world's social networking users, with 28% of users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 25% in North America, and 12% in the Caribbean and Latin America. ComScore analyst Gian Fulgoni recently noted that there are more social networking users (as measured by unique visitors) in both Asia Pacific and Europe than in North America. As well, the international market for social networking appears to be twice as large and growing much faster than the U.S.

"Social networking is flourishing in the Philippines and online ad-spending is increasing year-by-year," noted Peter Pezaris, CEO of Multiply. "Partnering with ABS-CBN, and having access to all their top-flight blue chip advertisers gives Multiply a strong competitive edge in grabbing an early and large slice of the online advertising pie while extending our brand in the Philippines, the Asia Pacific, and worldwide."

ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation is the largest integrated media and entertainment company in the Philippines, owning and operating more than 67 televisions stations, 19 radio stations and, through its interactive division, 30 websites.

"Multiply's unique focus on sharing media with real-life friends and family is what makes the service so appealing to Filipinos. Their appeal and brand is particularly attractive to ABS-CBN's portfolio of household name advertisers," says Paolo Pineda, Managing Director of ABS-CBN. "We're extremely excited about mobilizing our extensive sales force to work with our advertisers and introduce them to new online inventory opportunities presented in Multiply's appealing user base, comprised of upwardly mobile, Internet-savvy, young professionals."

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Yahoo! Once again, ABS-CBN had found a very wise and effective synergistic opportunity to reach Kapamilya viewers in the Philippines and around the world through Multiply. It was a way of the network to promote their shows to the A-B market particularly the teens. Now, account members can be updated and have access to the latest shows and projects of the network.

As most of you guys are happy that Multiply is now a Kapamilya terrain, we certainly can’t avoid detractors. Many thought that the partnership would only make the site ‘Jologs.’ Well, in the first place, I don’t think the staffs of the site would let that happen, if yes, then on what grounds? ABS-CBN would just promote their shows through upstreams, downstreams and logos just like other advertisers such as Globe and Smart. The format would not change. Moreover, I think that the term ‘Jologs’ was misused for such claim. Even though we often find some shows really trashy and pathetic for our sensibilities, if only we would analyze it, we could see the values being instilled and viewing needs given by the network to the viewers. If we couldn’t appreciate the shows, let’s just say that we are not the core market of the network for ABS-CBN targets females 18-35 Class CDE; obviously, we do not belong to that bracket. To make the discussion shorter, the point is that we cannot coin ABS-CBN or local mass media as ‘Jologs’ in the sense that the network was only giving the wants of the majority. Saying ABS-CBN is ‘Jologs’ also means that its viewers is like so. On the issue of educating and improving viewing sensibilities of the core market to our level and make them appreciate watching Gossip Girl, Desperate Housewives and Heroes, dream on! Ang idealistic lang. (I’ll just write a different blog for that)

On the other hand, a few are saying that it was a desperate strategy of the network against GMA 7. Well, instead of saying desperation, why not call it expansion and innovation?

So anong bottom-line ng blog na ‘to? Ang sa akin lang let’s just be happy on the upcoming developments now that ABS-CBN has tied up with Multiply.

3:10 PM

milkylicious

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