Ads, millennials power GMA online’s revenues

Broadcast giant GMA Network Inc. said its digital media arm saw a big jump in revenues in the first semester of 2017 on the back of online ad sales.

GMA Network said in a statement that GMA New Media Inc. (NMI) saw revenues hit P168.4 million, up 49 percent from January to June this year.

This was driven largely by online advertising, which jumped 135 percent to P113.2 million.

Moreover, year-to-date sales of GMANetwork.com, through programmatic partners, also grew by 39 percent.

It likewise benefited from partnerships with content discovery and community-building platforms such as Facebook and YouTube.

Recently, GMA, through NMI, inked a historic and unprecedented partnership with YouTube, the world’s most popular video sharing website. The partnership allowed viewers to access officially uploaded full episodes of GMA programs.

“The deal not only supports the anti-piracy efforts of the Philippine entertainment industry, but more importantly, addresses millennial video viewing habits,” GMA Network said in a statement.

Total views for GMA’s main YouTube channel reached almost two billion in the first six months while YouTube revenues went up by 72 percent to $543,114.

“The GMA Entertainment-only YouTube channel has shown great improvement over the first six months of the year as views and watch time grew more than threefold at 362 percent and 365 percent, respectively,” the company added.