Bloomberg Media saw 6% revenue growth in 2025

Bloomberg Media CEO Karen Saltser sent the following out to the staff:

Team,

We’ve spoken quite a bit recently about Bloomberg Media’s dual mission to broaden influence for all of Bloomberg’s businesses and to diversify revenue and audience through advertising, subscriptions, events and partnerships.

In a volatile global environment, we continue to invest in growing and retaining our most deeply engaged audiences – and the clients that want to reach them. This has led to revenue growth and significant progress in all of our key markets globally. Here are Media’s results for 2025:

Total revenue was up 6% year-over-year. Across our key business segments:

• Subscriptions revenue: +10%
• Total advertising & sponsorship (core ads + live events): +5%
• Live events sponsorships: +30%
• Licensing & Partnerships: -2%

This balance matters. It reflects a diversified revenue model where each business reinforces the others – and where we stay focused on what differentiates Bloomberg Media, rather than chasing others’ strategies or trends.

Our advertising business showed an impressive 82% client retention rate in 2025, and every international market finished FY25 up YoY in total advertising revenue:

• North America: +3%
• Europe: +11%
• Middle East & Africa: +6%
• Asia-Pacific: +8%

Given the variability we saw quarter to quarter earlier in the year, this is an important signal heading into FY26 – and a direct result of our continued international investment in sales, editorial, production and events. Live events growth played a significant role, with the return of the New Economy Forum and growth in events such as Bloomberg House Davos, Tech SF, Screentime and the Qatar Economic Forum.

Across the platforms: Video advertising (linear, digital and streaming) grew 1% YoY. Audio advertising was up 16% YoY, driven primarily by 36% growth in podcasts. Digital display advertising was close to flat.

Now to the audience underpinning all of this:

Today, we sit at 707,000+ paying subscribers. Our double-digit percentage YoY subscriber growth reflects improvements in pricing and retention. The big investment we made beginning in the summer of 2024 – focused on the pillars of editorial, product & engineering and sales & marketing – has built a base that is more loyal, active and valuable over time. It’s also been just over a year since we shifted toward more subscriber-only newsletters, and monthly newsletter users have grown 20% YoY.

Additionally, we’ve spoken a lot about the importance of video. The sheer quantity we produce – about 800 hours per month on average – live and on-demand in a range of formats for linear, digital and streaming is a key differentiator. We also launched on YouTube TV in October and continue to grow our global footprint strategically.

Hours watched grew 25% YoY, across linear, digital and streaming, signaling deeper usage and millions of added hours of viewing. We also finished the year averaging 55 million unique monthly viewers. Audio continued to scale meaningfully, up 15% YoY in average monthly listeners, and podcast downloads were up 26% YoY.

The news cycle – Spring ’25 tariff coverage (which drove us up over 60M+ average monthly unique viewers in the 1H 2025) and the high highs of last year’s elections, for example – are often great signs that people rely on us in the biggest moments. But we want to maintain a healthy focus on the audience’s time-spent and frequency with us throughout the year, not just the peaks. Across platforms, numerous metrics reinforce that theme. And in the coming days, we’ll share more about the evolution of our video product strategy to further enhance our connection with audiences – a meaningful next step that builds directly on the momentum reflected in this year’s results.

A few final prevailing themes to remember as we look ahead:

• Maintaining our commitment to investing in deeply engaged audiences is powering these new milestones for us and our clients every day. Let’s continue to innovate with this in mind.
• Technology continues supercharging how we work: AI is creating nimble solutions for employees, enabling better ad tech, speeding up product innovation and marketing. And the tech sector is heavily influencing our news coverage, moving markets and business decisions.
• Ultimately, we’re built on the trust and information – content and connections – that people need to make big decisions at work, grow their personal wealth and succeed. This is our DNA and our future.

Thank you for the work you do every day to make Bloomberg Media a trusted, influential and growing global business. We have so much more to accomplish together.

Karen