BBC Studios’ social team has launched a bespoke in-house ad sales function to drive revenue across social platforms including YouTube and Snapchat. According to BBCS, the new ad solution means advertisers can now directly align with 90+ premium BBC Studios’ social channels, including Doctor Who, Bluey and BBC Earth. At time of writing, BBC Studios Social offers a global reach of around 4.7bn views.
The new sales proposition marks the first time that BBC Studios has proactively offered social-first branded entertainment opportunities to clients and advertisers across its portfolio of brands. From direct sales to branded content, a new sales team, led by ex-Warner executives Gary Webber (group head of digital advertising) and Jasmin Islam (digital account director), says it has “an ambitious mandate”.
Speaking at a BBC Studios event in London, Webber said: “It feels like the right time to take BBC Studios’ digital and social content to the next level. This new sales team will enhance existing revenue streams and find partnerships with like-minded brands to create social-first content which showcases the best of these world-class BBC brands. We aim to become the UK’s number one broadcaster in the social space – reaching and engaging with millions of consumers both here and around the world.”
Webber and Islam will work closely with the BBC Studios social content team led by Athena Witter (VP of digital programming), which has commissioned over 50 hours of original social formats, including Hack Attack and Clean Team.
Leading the BBC Studios social team, and bringing the content and commercial arm together, is Jasmine Dawson (SVP of digital consumer engagement) who is responsible for the social growth strategy. She said: “We have built a diverse social portfolio with unrivalled global scale. Our eclectic slate will entertain and engage our audiences across all social platforms with world-class, brand-safe channels.”
BBC Studios’ top performing brands include Doctor Who (167m views on YouTube and Facebook in 2022), BBC Earth which has 35 million followers across all social platforms and Bluey which saw 1.1 billion views on YouTube and is the fastest growing preschool brand on Tik Tok ever – with 2.2 million followers in 9 months.
In a separate development, Dawson is currently looking hire a senior digital programming manager for Top Gear & factual entertainment brands.
