Bloomberg’s online video success

Josh Sternberg of Digiday.com writes about the online video efforts at Bloomberg News.

Sternberg writes, “In July, Bloomberg had its best month ever in terms of global unique visitors and streams, even outpacing competitor Dow Jones. According to comScore, Bloomberg saw 5.2 million global uniques (2 million in the U.S) and 27.4 million global video streams (7.6 million in the U.S) compared to Dow Jones’ 4.8 million global uniques (1.8 million U.S) and 13.8 million global video streams (4.6 million U.S).

“In November, the first month comScore tracked Bloomberg, the site had 1.3 million uniques.

“Bloomberg has production teams in New York, London and Asia, which together create an eye-popping 200 pieces of video content every day, both streaming video and video on demand. These segments – which run online – can be as short as 22 seconds, like this clip of an exuberant freshman convocation speech, or as long as an hour, which is the duration of its ‘Charlie Rose Show.’ Most sit between 1 and 3 minutes. This piece about the future of TV, for example, clocks in at a 1:25. Here’s a 1:41 piece about the four types of missiles that could fly over Syria.

“Berend describes Bloomberg video as falling into one of three categories: breaking news; a middle space not pegged to news ‘but in the conversation’; and the trends space, connecting the dots of the zeitgeist for its audience.

“As a result of all this investment, video has become a serious revenue generator. According to sources, Bloomberg charges roughly $75 CPMs for video, which is much more than the $15 CPMs it typically gets for dot-com content. A Bloomberg spokesperson said that CPMs on dot-com can reach as high as $90. Trevor Fellows, head of ad sales for Bloomberg Media, said this combination of pre-roll and company units works well together.”