Bloomberg EMEA boss outlines ad plans behind Europe brand expansion
Bloomberg has launched Bloomberg Business Europe, marking its first ever digital regional expansion.
Under the editorial leadership of former Wired.co.uk editor Nate Lanxon, the site – which sits within the framework of the global offering – will focus on themes of global significance but European in origin.
It will also offer more localised advertising products, live events and licensing deals.
Adam Freeman, the company’s first managing director EMEA, told The Drum that when it comes to its advertising offering, it has “underperformed” and hasn’t offered a joined-up sales proposition to the biggest markets in Europe, particularly the UK.
The hiring of Matt Teeman as commercial director in July marked the beginning of it a drive to better establish its offering, while Freeman said it has since “opened the doors” for the first time to European ad agencies.
“We’ve raised awareness, we’re already the biggest business media brand in Europe [8.5 million unique users a month]. We’ve got a bigger audience than the FT in Europe across our platforms, but no one really knows that. So we’ve built a lot of momentum with advertisers.”
The European edition has launched with a number of new advertisers, including Lotus, iShares and Lacoste, as well as those it has previously worked with including Barclays, Microsoft and Accenture. The potential is promising, with advertising revenue across all Bloomberg Media properties in EMEA in the first quarter of this year up 25 percent compared to Q1 of 2014.
In addition to standard ad units, it has started to expand its branded content formats which it “historically hasn’t delivered enough of in this region.”
“We’re rapidly expanding and recruiting to build these sorts of projects,” said Freeman.
The ad offering has also seen the introduction of Smartology's SmartMatch technology which uses semantic profiling to match editorial content with relevant thought leadership articles from advertisers.
Selling a portion of its inventory programmatically is also on the agenda. Although Freeman declined to go into detail, he revealed Bloomberg Media Europe has signed a deal with an unnamed partner that will come into effect later this year.
Freeman, who was previously executive director of The Guardian, said it is also considering the benefits of joining an collaborative programmatic trading alliance such as Pangaea.
“We have an amazing audience and great cross-platform assets but haven’t historically packaged it up for advertisers. so our first calling is to get that right,” he said.
“But collaborating with other digital businesses is at the heart of digital, to think that you can do it all yourself is naïve. So with great brands like the Economist, the FT, the Guardian, yes we compete but we can also collaborate. So that’s always going to be something we’re open to having a conversation about.”
He finally revealed that its global expansion drive will continue in force with the forthcoming launch of Bloomberg Business Asia.