Bloomberg's new Twitter network will launch Dec 18; sources say it has already secured eight-figures in ad revenue for its first year
Bloomberg's new Twitter network will launch on Dec. 18 with six founding partners: Goldman Sachs, Infiniti, TD Ameritrade, CA Technologies, AT&T and CME Group — and more are in the works. Tweets: @dancow Tweets: Dan Nguyen / @dancow : Wow, $8-15M to hire 50 journalists for a Twitter-based news network? http://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This launch is the endpoint of a two-year escalation between Bloomberg and Twitter: it began with a 2015 terminal-data licensing deal, moved into revenue-split livestreams of Bloomberg's daily shows and presidential-debate coverage in 2016, and became a dedicated plan when the two signed on for a 24/7 ad-supported, Twitter-exclusive news channel last May.
What changed today is the commercial proof point: rather than waiting for launch to test demand, Bloomberg has pre-sold eight figures of first-year inventory to six founding partners — Goldman Sachs, Infiniti, TD Ameritrade, CA Technologies, AT&T and CME Group — effectively de-risking a channel built for an audience that lives entirely inside Twitter.
First-order effects
- Bloomberg is staffing a Twitter-native newsroom (roughly 50 journalists per the reporting) whose output never touches bloomberg.com or TV — a new cost center justified entirely by the pre-sold sponsorships.
- The six founding partners get category positioning on a live breaking-news format at launch pricing, while Twitter gets a marquee always-on show that keeps users in-app instead of clicking out to publisher sites.
Second-order effects
- The other names in Twitter's 16-partner streaming slate — BuzzFeed, The Verge, Viacom, Live Nation — now face a benchmark for what a committed advertiser roster looks like, pressuring them to package exclusive live formats rather than one-off streams.
- Financial-media rivals watching Goldman Sachs and CME Group underwrite a social-first channel must decide whether to match with their own platform-exclusive products or concede the format's early branding to Bloomberg.
Third-order effects
- If TicToc sustains its audience after the launch, the deal structure — platform owns distribution, publisher owns the newsroom, sponsors buy in upfront — becomes a template for how legacy news brands fund coverage without owning the pipe, and a test case for how much leverage platforms gain over the publishers who depend on them.
The trend: News organizations are shifting from syndicating content to their own properties toward building platform-native channels funded by upfront sponsorships, trading distribution control for guaranteed reach.