Inside Bloomberg Media’s Quicktake Network Ambitions

One year on from graduating beyond Twitter and Bloomberg Media’s 24/7 business, new streaming service Quicktake has shown the validity of the model. Now, the goal is to keep investing in internal and external programming, grow distribution, ad revenue and—ultimately—drive new, younger subscribers to Bloomberg Media. In its Upfronts debut in May, Quicktake announced three shows working with talent outside of the Bloomberg newsroom, including professor Scott Galloway and NBA player Chris Paul, a departure from the company's status quo. Thursday, September 30, Quicktake aired its six-episode show, The Business of Fashion hosted by Imran Amed. In the show, Amed investigates how the global fashion industry is recovering from the last 18 months, looking at the fashion houses that emerged stronger and exploring pressing questions, like how to keep fashion sustainable and promoting diversity within shows. The show airs biweekly on Quicktake OTT and runs across the full Quicktake network on social platforms including Twitter and YouTube, plus Apple TV, Roku and Bloomberg.com. A 'post-pandemic network' Expanding beyond Twitter in November 2020—at the heart of the pandemic—gave Quicktake a refreshed aim to be a “post-Covid network,” a brand that is designed to explain and chronicle the business challenges of this new world that we’re living in, explained Scott Havens, chief growth officer and global head of partnerships at Bloomberg Media. "We want to reach the next generation of leaders, thinkers and successful people," Havens told Adweek. "Marketers want to reach these folks, there are not tons of traditional networks positioned around business in the social and digital video space and, with the rise of OTT, we know dollars will flow aggressively." The idea is the streaming service attracts younger people who ultimately go on to take out a Bloomberg Media subscription, which now has more than 325,000 subscribers. The active subscriber base grew by 34% in the first half of 2021 compared with the same period the year before—more than 40% of these are outside the U.S. Those numbers translate to revenue, too. Subscriptions business revenue rose 80% in the first half of 2021 over the previous year. But the company is still working on how to best make that link between TV viewers and digital subscribers. We have an intellectually curious audience and want to show them amazing experiences.Scott Havens, chief growth officer and global head of partnerships at Bloomberg Media There's elasticity in business programming for the next generation. Havens is bullish about acquiring new shows next year in topics like tech, lifestyle, traveling, food and culture, health and wellness and the future of work—as well as working with finfluencers, creators and experts in crypto and fintech. These are all areas where it has already run smaller segments but will expand into 20-minute long mini-docs fit for Quicktake. “We’re not ignorant of the success of Stanley Tucci’s CNN show Searching for Italy,” Havens told Adweek. “We talk about chronicling the future of business, but we have an intellectually curious audience and want to show them amazing experiences.” Scope for audience growth Outside of spending millions of dollars on marketing for subscriber acquisition like streaming services like Disney+ might, having notable people to lead shows, who come with a social following, is a trustworthy way to grow an audience. And there’s scope for audience growth: Quicktake had 2.3 million views in August across OTT platforms including Apple TV, Amazon Fire and Roku. That’s up about 70% from November to December last year at launch, where audiences are expected to be lower at the offset. That hikes up to 54 million across social networks like Twitter and YouTube, but duplicating audiences is tougher. In the meantime, Quicktake is punching when it comes to ad revenue, working with brands like Accenture, American Express and Citibank. Advertisers can sponsor a show for a season, but revenue from ads also comes from spots run contextually across platforms, where the CPMs are generally higher than display, and also from programmatic channels from over-the-top platforms and digital services, a high-growth area where quality supply is still low and the CPMs are high. This year, it expects to grow Quicktake ad revenue by 125% compared with 2020, taking into account the lows of Q2 coupled with the highs of Q4, said Havens. But overall, that’s still a sliver of the company’s whole. Quicktake contributes single-digit revenue to Bloomberg Media, the bulk of revenue coming from Bloomberg.com. That means there’s a lot of room to grow. Bloomberg Media and Ebony Join Forces to Seek Out New Audiences “There’s no reason [Quicktake] can't be as big as the .com business in few years' times,” said Havens. And that will come from its video everywhere distribution strategy. “We won’t have regrets about not being anywhere, we’re closing all deals on the major OTT platforms by the end of the year. If you don’t have distribution, then no one sees it and you have no ads business," he added. "We were really aggressive in our footprint with Bloomberg TV, we’re able to capitalize on those relationships. Quicktake is another channel added to the line-up—we’re confident in exponential growth in audience.”