Financial media business Bloomberg this morning announced the launch of ‘Bloomberg Originals’, a new brand for original programming on Bloomberg’s CTV app and linear channels. The move marks further commitment by the publisher to growing its audience on its CTV app.
Bloomberg says that its newly commissioned original series will include cinematic documentary-style deep-dives, talk shows, live events and video podcasts. Among the shows already announced are a series on climate solutions hosted by former White House aide Kal Penn, an interview series with journalist Emily Chang, and a series on scientific breakthroughs with mathematician Hannah Fry.
These Originals will be available on Bloomberg’s CTV app, as well as Bloomberg’s website. They’ll also be aired during weekend and primetime slots on Bloomberg’s linear channels Bloomberg TV and BTV+.
A reset for Quicktake
Despite the opportunities that CTV opens up for publishers, relatively few have actually invested significantly.
For Bloomberg, the move was perhaps an obvious one, given that it already ran its own linear TV channel. However the strategies for the two offerings are quite different: its linear TV channel is a paid subscription service, whereas its CTV offering has been set up as a free, ad-supported channel. And the growth of this streaming service has been impressive.
Bloomberg Media says it reached over 30 million viewers monthly on streaming video platforms last year, with a further 49 million on social media (not including YouTube). This was accompanied by 20 percent growth in total video revenues across the year. With this new content investment, Bloomberg will look to grow this audience further.
Alongside the launch of Bloomberg Originals, Bloomberg is separating out its Quicktake brand. Quicktake started out as an entirely social media-focussed brand, producing short video clips for Twitter and other platforms. But in 2020, the brand expanded onto CTV – Bloomberg’s entire CTV app was previously run under the Quicktake brand.
Now Quicktake will refocus on social platforms, though there will still be crossover, as some Quicktake content will run on the Bloomberg CTV app (and indeed, some of the newly commissioned Originals are designed to work on Quicktake’s social channels).
