Bloomberg on track to break its advertising record

The consumer-facing arm of Bloomberg expects to have its strongest ever year of advertising revenue, with European sales outperforming global figures.

Global advertising and events revenue grew by 73%, including a 47% lift in "core advertising". Digital advertising revenue was up 59%, TV advertising grew by 30%, radio advertising was up 35% and print advertising grew by 28%. 

The multimedia company grew advertising revenue in Europe by 62% in the first half of 2021, driven by strong demand for digital advertising (up 79%), which is Bloomberg Media’s largest advertising revenue line. The company did not disclose actual revenue figures.

Bloomberg operates a wire service (Bloomberg News), a global television network (Bloomberg Television), the streaming service Bloomberg Quicktake, events, websites, radio stations (Bloomberg Radio), subscription-only newsletters and magazines. It employs 20,000 people worldwide.

The three advertising categories that showed the largest growth are luxury goods, automotive and financial services.

Bloomberg also grew its active subscriber base by 34% to more than 325,000 businesses, with about 40% of subscribers outside of the US. It predicts subscriptions could rise to 400,000 by the end of the year.

Bloomberg Media’s head of European sales Duncan Chater said advertising revenue in the region began to recover in the second half of 2020.

“From Q3 in 2020 we noticed that new business was outpacing attrition by 3.5 times, which was really encouraging. We're seeing a lot of new clients come into our portfolio,” he said. “The other thing that we really noticed is that the average deal size grew significantly, up by 144%, so they are spending a lot more with us across different platforms.”

Chater said another reason for the growth was interest around the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow this year, a trend he recently wrote about in Campaign.

“Platforms like Bloomberg are really attractive for companies when they're trying to convey their communication goal,” he said. 

“Our audience wears many hats in the business world, whether it is corporate executives, entrepreneurs and so on, and we are supporting our advertising partners with new insight tools and reports to help them understand how consumers are behaving and what they're thinking.”

In an internal email shared with Campaign, Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith said the company was on track to deliver the best year in its history.

“The story of the first half makes it clear that we’re not just outpacing a tough early pandemic Q2 of 2020 but also the pre-pandemic Q1 of last year, as well as our record-setting revenue in 2019,” Smith wrote.

“When compared to 2019, our first half ad revenue is up by 30%. These numbers set an important new high water mark for Bloomberg Media’s global revenue.”