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Bloomberg Media and Ebony are teaming up to make Black stories more visible.
The two publishers announced a year-long content-sharing collaboration this morning to cross-pollinate the Bloomberg Equality and Ebony audiences through original content, brand exposure initiatives and custom reports.
Ultimately, the tie-up will drive new—potentially paying—audiences, and more ad revenue.
“Ebony has been a Bible for the Black community, and Bloomberg is a data powerhouse,” said Jacqueline Simmons, Bloomberg News senior executive editor, Americas. “Following the events of 2020, we felt that the combination of this iconic brand and our ability to parse the numbers that show where the inequities are could create a powerful pairing of data with faces.”
The partnership comes at a critical time for both publishers. Digital subscription growth has slowed, prompting publishers like Bloomberg Media, which recently topped 300,000 subscribers, to seek out new audiences to convert. Ebony, which relaunched as a “75-year-old startup” in February, will need to grow its audience rapidly to compete for advertising budgets against its quickly consolidating peers. Because both publishers report on different aspects of the Black community––Ebony covering culture, Bloomberg Equality covering business and policy––the pairing hopes to benefit both parties by sharing complementary, though not redundant, readerships.
Content and brand-strength report
As part of the arrangement, the Bloomberg Media Strategy team created two reports for Ebony using the Bloomberg Brand Health System, a tool the publisher uses to measure brand valuation by linking the perceptions of senior business leaders with Bloomberg data. The reports, which also employ Bloomberg AiQ, a proprietary AI-driven analytics tool, aim to provide Ebony with data that can inform its advertising campaigns.
The deal also has four content-sharing components: an Ebony x Bloomberg Equality module on the Ebony homepage; social media cross-promotion and call-outs in their respective newsletters, Inside Ebony and Bloomberg Equality; a four-episode installment of the Bloomberg Quicktake video series MADE, spotlighting the work of Black artists, designers and creators chosen in collaboration with Ebony; and a one-hour Bloomberg Television special in November on the return of the annual Ebony Power 100.
The Ebony x Bloomberg Equality module will link to a dedicated page with relevant news articles and video content, such as the Quicktake series Then This Happened and The Pay Check. The two newsletters, which each publish Thursday, will promote one another internally. Inside Ebony reaches 800,000 free subscribers and, along with Ebony’s social media, generates 80% of the publisher’s traffic, according to the publisher. Bloomberg Media declined to provide the subscriber count of its Equality newsletter.
The two video projects will increase the visibility of Bloomberg Media’s Quicktake and Bloomberg Television offerings, while boosting awareness of Ebony. Bloomberg Quicktake experienced 20% growth in viewership from Q1 to Q2 2021 and reached 7.4 million average monthly viewers between December and February, according to previous Adweek reporting. The news streaming channel experienced its best month ever in July, with 50% growth month-over-month from June, according to a spokesperson for Bloomberg Media.
While the full financial specifics of the deal were not disclosed, the arrangement does include licensed Bloomberg Equality content on Ebony, as well as shared revenue for any ads sold collaboratively against it, a spokesperson for Bloomberg Media confirmed. Advertisers will also be able to run pre-roll and banner advertising on the dedicated Bloomberg Equality HUB page on Ebony.
Circumventing discovery challenges
The partnership between Bloomberg Equality and Ebony serves two primary purposes.
By shining a light on Ebony, a publication historically entrenched in the Black community, Bloomberg Equality strengthens the media ecosystem serving Black readers, said Monica Melton, managing editor of The Plug.
“Black audiences are increasingly coveted and sought after with relevant content, so this partnership makes sense strategically,” Melton said. “Even better still is the focus on social and economic inequity. As one of the first Black-owned media companies to syndicate content through Bloomberg at The Plug, we recognize firsthand how important it is to mark the shift in how Black innovation is shaping business and society.”
The partnership also exposes a new audience of Black news-consumers to the Bloomberg Media name, which has historically been associated with financial coverage. These kinds of audience-sharing strategies have become more common as publishers seek to bulk up their subscriber base, because they circumvent the challenges of discovery, said Felix Danczak, COO of the subscriptions platform Zephr.
“By bundling content from multiple publishers together, you get market exposure that wouldn’t naturally occur. At the same time, neither brand is risking their audience because the content isn’t competitive,” Danczak said.
Publishers under the same ownership, such as Outside Media, have historically bundled and cross-promoted their offerings, but in recent years more have begun striking mutually beneficial alliances with their industry peers.
“Bloomberg has a wealth of experience and resources when it comes to creating content,” said Michele Ghee, CEO of Ebony and Jet. “And we have an amazing audience, which is a resource in and of itself. So we really think the deal works both ways.”
