Bloomberg Media sees subs up 86% in March

New subscriptions to Bloomberg Media grew by 86% in March compared with February, despite — like a lot of U.S. publishers — hosting most of its coronavirus coverage outside its paywall, reports Digiday’s Lucinda Southern in an interview with Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith.

Here is an excerpt:

Explain the consumer behavior behind your subscription growth.

With so much change, so much upheaval, so much uncertainty, you’re seeing a historic peak in consumer interest in the news. Somewhere around 30% of our traffic is tied to our coronavirus coverage. The market coverage is still behind a paywall, but we’re seeing an uptake in our subscription business from both sides of that divide. Readers are coming to us then they then discover the breadth of coverage.

Bloomberg Media is in an interesting position because we have a very global footprint. We’ve spoken a lot with our colleagues in China, Hong Kong and Singapore and we’ve been able to get a sense from them of what to expect. I just heard this morning from a colleague that was saying that the first couple of weeks are definitely the most difficult.

This is a very personal story from an economic perspective, the impact on markets and the economy is so pronounced and so dramatic and so unprecedented. The threat that this virus is presenting is to entire industries. No matter what, industries are going from being very healthy to literally going to close to zero demand.

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