These are challenging times for many news publishers. Not only is the global news media business contending with declining print and TV audiences offline as they have for years, but in a rapidly changing world of AI search queries, the once robust levels of online search engine referral traffic are now dropping off quickly.
In this environment, many news media companies are still weighing the pros and cons of signing content licensing deals with AI companies. Bloomberg Media is one of those companies weighing its options. CEO Karen Saltser tells Campaign that while discussions are ongoing, Bloomberg wants to keep the value of its content and for the time being is focused on its own AI innovations “within its halls.”
Bloomberg, in fact, has been an AI pioneer, long-relying on the technology to gather information at speed to power its lucrative financial information terminal business. Now, it’s using AI to improve its search engine, to develop contextual targeting for advertisers on Bloomberg TV live video, and to build customised audience GPTs to test marketing messaging and product features.
There is a reason why Bloomberg, with a can afford to be more patient and invest in its own AI. Not only is its sister terminal business still robust for the near-term, but Bloomberg Media has been focusing more of its efforts on putting products like newsletters behind a paywall, choosing to drive subscriptions and live events to counter advertising’s challenges in reaching fragmented digital audiences.
And the strategy appears to be paying off. In its first half results in 2025, Bloomberg Media CEO Karen Saltser reported a year-on-year 7% increase in total revenue, with a 19% gain in live event revenue, an 8% gain in subscriber revenue and a 16% gain in paying subscribers across digital and print.
Campaign Asia-Pacific sat down with Saltser at Bloomberg’s New Economy Forum in Singapore for a wide-ranging interview to discuss the news media business, AI and the company’s expectations for Asia.
The following is an edited excerpt of this discussion, in which Saltser reveals how a year of change, volatility and polarisation of news has provided new opportunities for Bloomberg to position itself as a much-needed source for objective, fact-based information.
Campaign: You had enviable ad and subscriptions results for a media company in H1. How sustainable are the gains? How are you tracking in H2?
Saltser: We are on track in the second half to once again show year-over-year growth across all of our revenue streams and across our regions. We have doubled down in the last 18 months on accelerating our subscription business because it is so important to us to have that level of diversification.
Not only have we increased our subscriptions this year, but the reason that I believe we will retain them and maintain the momentum of growth is because of the investments that we've made in deeper engagement, looking at things like days active and time spent. We've invested in new content, product functionality, as well as sales and marketing.
To what extent does geopolitics affect your business? We've seen a challenge to the world order this year. Does that drive consumers to seek context and answers?
We have [seen this] and volatility is good for Bloomberg’s business. What we see is people seeking us out and engaging with us even more, knowing we are fact-based and data-driven. This gives us the credibility and trust when, as you know, there are many, many other sources that people might question.
Earlier in the year when the U.S. tariffs were announced, we saw a flood of traffic to the site and a significant increase in conversions, as well as strong video statistics from live coverage to some of our weekly docs.
Despite having a politically active owner, how has Bloomberg been able to largely avoid accusations of political bias in coverage? Polarised media has loomed large in the US. In recent months, even international media pillars like the BBC are embroiled in bias controversies. To what extent are these becoming harder for media companies to avoid?
Without commenting positively or negatively on our friends and competitors in the field, we take pride that we are fact-based and data-driven. As there is greater polarisation, that actually creates more opportunity for us because our audiences are the type of business decision makers and leaders, whether in the public or private sector, who need the facts.
It's interesting that you mentioned we have an owner who has a point of view. But that view is never imposed on the newsroom. There has, since day one, been an incredible separation of church and state that exists through to this day. So that level of unbiased, down-the-middle news brings people to us in these times, not just volatile times, but also these modern times where there is so much that is polarising. People don't just want a point of view, they want to know the facts.
Your APAC business results have been slower compared to your other global regions. Are there specific challenges that your Asia business faces?
[Our results] will show growth year over year. A lot of the relationships that we work on are long-term. Some are at the beginning, some are in the middle, and then some will come to fruition. In the life cycle, many of [our ad sales and event sponsorships] are showing great promise closing in the second half and looking good for 2026.
The APAC region is about 20% of our consumer base, our audience, and our subscriptions, which is nice for a global media company. Because we're reaching a global audience of business decision makers, we're ensuring that we're providing enough information coming out of this region to satisfy customers around the world. Our live programming has five hours every single day from shows on Asia trade, China, alongside Insights with Haslinda Amin.
We've also invested just this year in building two new studios, one in Seoul, and one in Mumbai. We recently signed a distribution deal with JioTV in India, part of the largest OTT platform there, so we’re expanding our distribution in region as well. Then lastly, but probably one of the highest priority things that we've been working on for the last six to twelve months is a very significant refresh and relaunch of our Japanese website.
So, I think all the investment that we're doing in the region will also help to yield some of the growth ahead in the coming months.
What is the biggest challenge for news media companies these days?
There are a number of challenges, right? Audience fragmentation. There are so many more choices for consumers, and so advertisers are more selective. They also have greater choice and greater demands for ROI. And to be transparent, digital traffic is less predictable, it's changing, affecting all of us. So there's a combination of really challenging features that are affecting our industry.
The way we are facing those is really doubling down on subs, as we've discussed, on our deeply engaged audience, connecting people through our events and ensuring that we are delivering high value to the people who come to us for that.
Why have content platforms like Spotify and Netflix seemingly done a better job of serving up relevant content to individual consumer tastes than the news media?
The first thing we need to do is provide news where our audience is consuming it. That's why we are on nine different platforms, to ensure that you're getting the news, whether you want to watch BTV, want the vodcast, want the newsletter or our social channels. We do need to continue to evolve how we're delivering that news and the immediacy of it is certainly significant. So we’ve been evolving on how quickly and how much of our content we are providing on social and vertical video.
Are AI Overviews a big threat to news providers?
It delivers at a high level, which is why we focus on ensuring that our subscribers are getting value for their money, right, so that they keep coming back. We see value in AI. It's not either-or. For us, it's not a strategy, but it's definitely a tool we're deeply engaged with.
Bloomberg's been using AI for many, many years, it’s not new to us. Some of the tools are newer, and the teams from editorial to our product team to our advertising team, are building tools to better serve, customise and personalise for the audience that you just mentioned.
You’ve stuck to a position of not licensing LLMs for training, but conversations are evolving on usage. Any change in your position, or in developments for AI licensing?
We have current conversations with the significant tech players ongoing, still in the conversation stage. Training is not the direction that we're going in those conversations.
We believe our content has huge value and we want to maintain that. We're figuring out possible future opportunities but for now, we're doing a lot of really interesting innovation and building with their tools inside of our halls.
