Storytelling/sharing platform Wattpad has a new yarn for Asia, starring Dexter Ong (formerly 21st Century Fox), debuting in his role as head of Asia during the Asia Pacific Video Operator’s Summit (APOS) in Bali at the end of April.

The turbocharged plot for Asia builds on an already strong base in the Philippines, growing penetration in Indonesia and the rest of Southeast Asia, as well as on a billion data points a day able to give shape and direction to new relationships between story tellers, broadcasters, marketers and online platforms.

Ong’s appointment is part of an expansion plan fuelled by US$51-million in new funding closed in January this year. China’s Tencent Holdings led the round, which valued the company at about US$400 million. Investors included Philippines-based Globe Telecom subsidiary Kickstart Ventures, Hong Kong-based Peterson Group and existing investor Raine Ventures.

Globally, Wattpad has a monthly audience of 65 billion (and a presence in every country in the world) using 50+ languages and spending 15 billion minutes on the platform every month. The average session time is 30 minutes. 90% of its audience is Gen Z/millennial.

“We have stories that are resonating and now it’s time for us to invest further... and to bring the stories to different platforms,” says Aron Levitz, Wattpad’s head of studios, the unit charged with giving life to Wattpad stories across other platforms, including film, TV and publishing.

Two years after taking the Studios job, Levitz says Wattpad is seeing global trends being translated for Asia in, for instance, the rise of Muslim romance stories across the region.

“We see trends globally and then see how each region, how each country, is taking the trend and making it their own... We really won’t ever say that one trend is everywhere,” he says.

Levitz sees Wattpad’s strength in opening up new kinds of stories and story telling, with a built-in audience, to broadcast TV, film and digital platforms.

“We have this massive machine, we collect a billion points of data every day,” he says. The magic is in the analysis. “We have the data but where we really shine is working with partners to make sure we can analyse it the right way,” Levitz says, adding that the best people to ask “the machine questions are our partners”.

Among the success stories so far is the long-running partnership with free TV channel TV5 in the Philippines, which has created 250+ episodes from 76 Wattpad stories across six seasons. In North America, Wattpad works with Universal Cable Productions, eOne and HarperCollins, among others.

The Studios’ first digital project of 2018 was based on writer Lauren Palphreyman’s Cupid’s Match, about a student thrown into a mythical conflict when a matchmaking service pairs her with Cupid himself. The story has 39.9 million reads and 1.9 million votes on Wattpad, which partnered with CW Seed and crowd-sourced video production platform, Tongal, to create trailers. Fans voted on the trailers, and the KR Squared Productions’ pilot, starring Robert Palmer Watkins (General Hospital), premiered on CW Seed on Valentine’s Day.

Whatever the success stories, Levitz says Wattpad has no blueprint for a perfect partnership.

At a moment when the entertainment industry is in a state of disruption and change, the aim is to create new kinds of partnerships, Levitz says, adding: “It’s less about the specific business structures, and more about a mindset.”

Originally published in the APOS 2018 print issue