Bloomberg posts record digital audience due to Brexit

Jed Sandberg, executive editor of Bloomberg Digital, and Scott Havens, Bloomberg Media’s global head of digital, sent this message to the staff Thursday:

Folks,

We wanted to thank you all for preparing, mobilizing and producing follow-the-sun coverage of the seismic Brexit vote and its aftermath. Beginning late last week, over the weekend and into this week, we’ve provided the kind of smart, sophisticated, data-rich news and analysis that sets us apart in a crowded media environment. And we all know this is just the start of a years-long story.

Given our global journalism resources and the reach of our platforms, we continue to provide our readers, viewers and listeners deep and idea-driven reporting of a story that is rumbling through every country and every sector–private and public. And due to the strength of our multi-platform distribution, we are able to provide news and information on any medium that suits our audience: digital, TV, video and radio.

On Friday, as Brexit results rolled in, we had the most traffic to our digital platforms since we launched the new site design in January 2015. Brexit stories ran the table for the top five performing articles on Bloomberg.com, including the Brexit Tracking Indicator dataviz that had been monitoring polls for weeks. Our audience spent more than 1.5 million hours combined on our site, nearly double our Friday average. We also saw a rush of unique visitors to our mobile apps, which finished their best week since January 2015.

Bloomberg TV and Radio teams around the world demonstrated seamless coverage across oceans and delivered news and global perspectives about one of the most consequential economic events of the year. Al Mayers and our TV team nimbly balanced the news that matters most to our audience, streaming it over multiple media in real time. We secured interviews with dozens of newsmakers, including former ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet, former Bank of England Governor Mervyn King, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Janus Capital’s Bill Gross, and London Mayor Sadiq Khan among many others. The results speak for themselves: Friday was our best day of the year in video viewership.

On Sunday, our Bloomberg TV colleagues operated on a regular weekday schedule and covered the story from all angles and regions. And audiences tuned in as it happened: our Sunday Live TV audience on Bloomberg.com was more than double our average viewership.

NewsWhip measured the way audiences engaged with Brexit coverage on social media on Thursday night and Friday, showing the number of times tweets and Facebook posts about the referendum were quoted or shared. On Facebook, our coverage was shared more than New York Times, Washington Post, Daily Mail and others.

Events like these realize our mission: To deliver the highest quality business and financial journalism all the time, on any medium.

Our profound thanks to all of you for making Bloomberg a global destination for one of the most momentous economic and political stories in modern European history. Onward.