Social networking and social websites might seem like something reserved for the western world, but it has been huge in the Philippines for years. When I lived in Cebu, Friendster was a big hit even before Myspace came along and popularized it. Today, Friendster is still the social networking juggernaut in the Philippines and most of Asia. With that said, it was only a matter of time before someone targetted ads at this audience and Multiply, the 5th most visited site in the Philippines has partnered with ABS-CBN, the Philippine media juggernaut to deliver it. Now instead of seeing dating ads targetted at Americans, Filipinos can see dating ads targetted at them. That is neat. 
Multiply has been growing rather quietly internationally. The social media aggregator now has 7 million registered users and 10.5 million monthly unique visitors according to their internal numbers, nearly triple their 2006 traffic. Comscore’s most recent numbers show 12.5 million uniques for September.
The service acts like a meta social network where users can collect and share content from multiple social sites (photos, video, blogs). See our earlier comparison with Vox. Users post 1.25 million photos, 16,000 videos and 55,000 blog entries daily. However, while the U.S. is home to the largest share of their registered users, most of their traffic is international.
The Philippines is one of the most pronounced examples of their large international following. Alexa ranks Multiply as the 5th largest site in the Philippines – with more than 2 million unique monthly visitors. We had earlier reported that 39% of the site’s traffic comes from the Philippines. Therefore it’s no surprise that they’ve managed to land a multi-year ad deal with one of the Philippine’s largest networks, ABS-CBN. ABS-CBN has 67 televisions stations, 19 radio stations, 30 websites and reaches 97% of the Filipinos with televisions. Under terms of the agreement, ABS-CBN interactive will sell advertising and mobile services for Multiply’s Filipino users, with the two companies sharing revenues. – TechCrunch
10 Comments
That’s an interesting move for both multiply and ABS-CBN. This should be an experiment worth following as too few Filipino companies have delved online (and fewer still in online advertising).
I was actually thinking about how Multiply never anticipated the amount of Filipinos not only using their platform, but using it as an online storefront, peddling anything from baby clothes to fashion accessories. The folks at Multiply are going to try and capitalize on this, but I’m at a loss at what exactly they are going to do, I doubt advertising will cut it as we’ve never been known to click on those ads.
Do a lot of Pinoys actually buy online? I doubt it … not enough to actually make millions out of. So I don’t know.
As for ads … what ads? I don’t ever see them.
Well they don’t buy online, people treat it like a catalog, if they’re interested in buying, they email / SMS / call the site owner and pay through Western Union etc etc. At least that’s how it works on the multiply sites I know.
Here’s the site I made for my girl, she’s doing quite alright with selling her wares through the site : http://no3m1.multiply.com.
And there are ads, but they aren’t pervasive, they’re usually on the right sidebar of multiply sites.
That’s an interesting move for both multiply and ABS-CBN. This should be an experiment worth following as too few Filipino companies have delved online (and fewer still in online advertising).
I was actually thinking about how Multiply never anticipated the amount of Filipinos not only using their platform, but using it as an online storefront, peddling anything from baby clothes to fashion accessories. The folks at Multiply are going to try and capitalize on this, but I’m at a loss at what exactly they are going to do, I doubt advertising will cut it as we’ve never been known to click on those ads.
Do a lot of Pinoys actually buy online? I doubt it … not enough to actually make millions out of. So I don’t know.
As for ads … what ads? I don’t ever see them.
Well they don’t buy online, people treat it like a catalog, if they’re interested in buying, they email / SMS / call the site owner and pay through Western Union etc etc. At least that’s how it works on the multiply sites I know.
Here’s the site I made for my girl, she’s doing quite alright with selling her wares through the site : http://no3m1.multiply.com.
And there are ads, but they aren’t pervasive, they’re usually on the right sidebar of multiply sites.
ABS-CBN + Multiply = FAIL.
ABS-CBN + Multiply = FAIL.
People using it as storefronts may be doing rather well, but I wonder if these ads will do as well. How do they make money? … pageviews? clicks? People browsing Multiply storefronts like your girlfriend’s aren’t necessarily going to be interested in these ads and none of the ads seem to be context sensitive. I’m guessing Multiply is just going to serve ads based on originating IPs instead of serving ads people would be interested in.
People using it as storefronts may be doing rather well, but I wonder if these ads will do as well. How do they make money? … pageviews? clicks? People browsing Multiply storefronts like your girlfriend’s aren’t necessarily going to be interested in these ads and none of the ads seem to be context sensitive. I’m guessing Multiply is just going to serve ads based on originating IPs instead of serving ads people would be interested in.