Vishal Sarin, director for content partnerships of YouTube Southeast Asia, says they will be expanding their presence in the Visayas-Mindanao areas starting off with Cebu. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
CEBU CITY, Philippines — Cementing its stronghold as a data company in the Philippines, YouTube will be expanding its programs outside of Metro Manila, starting off with Cebu, according to its top executive on Wednesday, September 4, 2019.
Vishal Sarin, director of content partnerships in Southeast Asia, said expanding their reach to Cebu is a logical progression, noting that key cities outside Manila are also growing in terms of consuming content from YouTube.
“As a data company, were are looking at where consumption is coming form, where we have maximum creative potential. Outside of Metro Manila, we see the highest consumption is in Cebu, where there are budding creative talents,” he told CDN Digital.
Sarin said there are two growth areas for YouTube in the Philippines: learning and education, and the regional growth aspect, which they call as “regional Philippines.”
“If we want to be mainstream, we should venture out and go to the provinces,” said Sarin.
Sarin said they are looking at expanding their creative workshops in Cebu.
“We got a lot of requests from creators in Cebu. It’s a flouring content creators community there. Something is definitely planned for Cebu,” he said.
Programs
Currently, YouTube has Pop-up Space Manila and Youtube NextUp.
YouTube Pop-up Space, which is on its third run in Manila, is an initiative created to support “creative communities around the world.” It is also an investment in the development and growth of content creators.
Under Pop-up Space, creators are given the opportunities to produce content with higher-end sets, equipment and crew. There are also trainings on production fundamentals and strategies used by the most successful YouTube creators.
The other program called NextUp is YouTube’s investment to help creators take the next step in their career.
It was first launched in 2017.
The program chooses 12 creators every year, who win the Philippine peso equivalent of $2,000 worth of production stipend, an intensive production Creator Camp for Partners to learn new skills, and ongoing mentorship by the YouTube Partnerships team.
For Batch 2019, a resident of Cebu’s Minglanilla town, Rhea Alducente, was chosen as one of the winners.
A Masbate native, Dwight Tamayo, who completed his Nursing degree at the Cebu Doctors’ University, was also chosen as one of the 2019 YouTube NextUp winners.
Regional presence
Although he cannot divulge further details, Sarin said the expansion of workshops to Cebu will happen before the end of 2019 or by early 2020.
He noted that expanding their regional presence in other Visayas-Mindanao (VisMin) cities is not happening one city after another.
Instead, YouTube officers and representatives are scouting different cities in the VisMin areas to check on where they can build partnerships and collaborative relationships.
“One of our market channel network officers is going to Davao for a workshop with the content creators there. We are going to multiple provinces. It’s just that the degree of investments is higher in Cebu because we are also implementing a sequence of prioritization,” said Sarin.