By Denise A. Valdez, Reporter
GOOGLE-OWNED video streaming platform YouTube is aiming to tap the provincial market, as it strives to expand its presence in the Philippines.
Vishal Sarin, director for YouTube Content Partnerships in Southeast Asia, told reporters yesterday the company’s goal moving forward is to build its footprint outside Metro Manila.
“YouTube has become a lot more mainstream. We have a huge growth opportunity, I firmly believe, outside of Metro Manila. As part of our investments in this country, we’re going to go deep in the provinces, and we really believe this growth momentum will be sustained in the years to come,” he said after a media briefing in Taguig City.
“We hope to take our programs to provinces by end of this year or early next year. We are working on it. We are building our plans on it. We hope to execute it by the end of this year,” he added.
Over the past three years since the company set up its local base in 2016, Mr. Sarin said YouTube has seen the number of Philippine-based content creators grow twentyfold. In the Philippines, there are now 750 YouTube channels with more than 100,000 subscribers, and over 20 YouTube channels with one million subscribers and above.
With its goal to increase viewers and content creators from the provinces, YouTube is expecting to sustain around the same level of growth in the coming years.
However, Mr. Sarin said one of the challenges is internet accessibility and affordability, especially outside Metro Manila.
To address this, the company intends to strengthen partnerships with telecommunications companies to start programs that would bring the platform to rural areas.
“We want to continue our partnership with Smart (Communications, Inc.). We want to invest in programs to take this to the provinces, and we need to do that in a more bigger scale and a larger way, and that will change as we go ahead,” he said.
Mr. Sarin said the Philippines continues to be an important market for YouTube as it is “one of the most vibrant and fastest-growing” in Asia.
