Bloomberg Media targets 500,000 subscribers in first half of 2023

Bloomberg Media CEO M. Scott Havens sent the following memo to Bloomberg Media employees:

To our Bloomberg Media teammates around the world,

One month into a busy first quarter, with renewed energy and focus on the year ahead, I believe it’s important to share a final look at our financial results and accomplishments for 2022, much as other media industry organizations do.

Bloomberg Media’s 2022 revenue grew 16% year-over-year, driven by your incredible execution of an ambitious strategy during a challenging time for the global economy. As spending and growth slowed across much of the industry, we increased advertising revenue year-over-year for a 10th consecutive quarter and subscriptions revenue for a 20th straight quarter. While we may face macroeconomic headwinds ahead, this long stretch of continuous success should give you confidence that our team, culture, and strategy are well suited to enable future growth. In addition, we have incredibly valuable and differentiated news content, unique global cross-platform reach and a resilient – and highly desirable – audience of modern leaders.

2022’s “Before you change the world. Bloomberg.” global brand campaign challenged them to create the future of global business and doubled as a suitable motivation for us to deliver on our mission: to build deep relationships with business leaders by arming them with the news and information they need to succeed.

One example of the way we executed against this vision was the launch of Bloomberg UK, our cross-platform brand dedicated to British leaders. By regionalizing and expanding our offering in one of our most important global markets, we grew our UK subscriber base, boosted our digital UK-based monthly users by 1 million, and helped drive our advertising business to a historical high. We will continue adding exceptional new talent and a range of programming in the UK, and around the world.

Each project we’ve undertaken over the past year has been aimed at understanding, engaging, and growing our audience. Obviously, this focus will lead to a better product and user experience, but it also means more compelling and effective opportunities for marketers to reach business decisionmakers across our platforms.

Removing third-party advertising across Bloomberg digital platform was another decision made with our audience in mind. This long-debated choice immediately creates a better ecosystem for our users, a cleaner environment for our brand partners, and valuable real estate to promote Bloomberg content and initiatives.

We also launched Bloomberg Audience Accelerator, a new suite of first-party data-driven ad targeting products, powered by proprietary data and enriched by machine learning to help advertisers reach desired audiences.

We introduced our Enterprise Subscriptions business mid-year and quickly added tens of thousands of new subscribers. Five years since we launched the Blomberg.com paywall, this new business has helped catapult us to more than 450,000 subscribers globally and puts us on-course to reach more than a half-million subscribers in the first half of 2023. Not only is this an important new revenue stream, it also means more deeply engaged, more deeply understood users who can be served relevant advertising and become part of our communities at live events.

Below you will see the full rundown of our revenue growth, with some additional context on 2022 and 2023 to follow:

Year-end 2022 Bloomberg Media Revenue – YoY percentage change

Overall Revenue: +16%

Advertising: +15%
Total Video +21%
Digital Video (O&O, Streaming, Social): +22%
Linear TV +20%

Regional growth (ads + events):
APAC +31%
Europe +27%
MEA +37%
US +9%

Events: +46%
Subscriptions: +19%
Partnerships: +7%

Not only did all four key lines of business increase in 2022, but you’ll note each of our regions grew significantly — illustrating how well our global story resonates with audiences and marketers in every corner of the world.

Our video revenue, which is now a $100 million business built on a two-network, full-stack strategy, remains a key driver of advertising. Bloomberg TV continues to overperform, and last week we launched Bloomberg Originals – a massive cross-functional team effort to rebrand the streaming channel from Quicktake (which will now re-focus on short-form video). Our streaming platform revenue was up 51%. Our new series Getting Warmer with Kal Penn debuted last week. The Future with Hannah Fry and The Circuit with Emily Chang are coming soon. And, you’ll hear more about new shows tackling sports, politics, and of course, AI!

Global events performed well again in 2022, with highlights including the successful Qatar Economic Forum and the Bloomberg New Economy team’s best year ever. We held another impactful Forum in Singapore and the first-ever Bloomberg New Economy Gateway in Panama. In 2023, we’ll return to Qatar, add Gateways in Ireland and Morocco, bring new energy to Equality and launch new exciting franchises focused on entertainment and climate. Jessica Webber and her leadership team will focus on elevating these special marquee event franchises and setting us up for even more profitable and impactful growth.

In 2022, we brought in Nick Sallon to help lead the Partnerships team into the next phase. Nick has focused the team on four key areas of opportunity: video & audio, strategic partnerships, intellectual property and enterprise subscriptions. This has driven revenue growth from partnerships themselves, but also unlocks significant advertising revenue through OTT video distribution and audio partnerships as well as subscription revenue through group sales.

We’ve built a strong foundation for continued growth and I’m confident we’re well equipped to manage through any uncontrollable forces we might face in the future. In no small part, my confidence stems from the strong team and culture we have built together at Bloomberg Media. Teams have embraced our cultural pillars of “Be generous” and “Be ambitious” and it has helped create an environment that is collaborative, innovative, empathetic, inclusive, and as high-performing as any in our business. Our work here is never done and we will continue to invest in recruiting, developing, and retaining the best talent from an increasingly diverse set of backgrounds, experiences, voices and perspectives.

Thank you immensely to everyone for another incredible year in Media. We accomplished a great deal in 2022, and I’m excited to show the world what you’ll do in 2023.

Scott