Bloomberg CEO sets sights on double digit growth in 2019
Bloomberg hit record revenue in 2018, with 16 per cent year-over-year growth. The company achieved this historical high while launching new initiatives and innovating across core businesses. In 2018, digital advertising revenue grew 15 per cent, with new digital format advertising up 44 per cent. Bloomberg Live, another growth driver, jumped 82 per cent last year.
“2018 was a challenging year for the news media,” Smith told staff in a company-wide internal communication. “While competitors pivoted… Bloomberg Media invented our way forward by trying new things. This type of risk-taking is the essence of Bloomberg LP’s company culture of action and entrepreneurialism. Our priority for 2019 is to double-down on our strategy of innovation-based growth. We’ll aggressively expand our four new businesses and integrate them more deeply across our existing suite of products, platforms, services and teams. We are again projecting double digit year-over-year growth in 2019 and Q1 is already looking strong.”
International expansion is highlighted as being key to growth in 2019. A new television studio in Beijing is set to launch in spring, with further plans to pursue TV, digital, and content expansions in Israel, Switzerland, Middle East and Latin America. Mobile-first news platform TicToc will expand its reach beyond Twitter this year. The channel is already in more than 30 airports in the US and Canada and will soon release its first foreign language version.
Bloomberg today also announced the launch of TRIGR TV, a new ad-solution that will allow the group to serve dynamic advertising on Bloomberg TV based on market movements in the same way it currently does across its digital platforms.
You can read Justin B. Smith’s internal memo to staff in full here.
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