It took Falic Media only eight months to be featured on Nasdaq HQ’s coveted digital billboard. Every day, this capitalist landmark salutes the companies that announce an IPO or hit a milestone, usually involving figures in the billions of dollars.

For Bloomberg Línea, a partnership between Falic Media and Bloomberg Media launched in August 2021, the occasion in March 2022 was having reached 8 million readers six months after its launch. The feeling of satisfaction in the venture was summed up by its COO Kaio Philipe: “It’s a small step in the right direction to be Latin America’s top financial and business news digital multiplatform.”

Only 11 months after its launch, Bloomberg Línea had reached an audience of more than 3 million visitors per month, serving more than 16 countries in South, Central, and North America — from the Rio Grande to Patagonia. Adding to the Web properties, the brand is also building an organic audience with multiple segmented newsletters, social media, podcasts, and events.

Added features

Along the way, a couple of launches have proved the brand was well received in the region’s top markets: La Estrategia del Día (LED, or “The Strategy of the Day”) podcast and videocast, the Portuguese language Web series Casa de Negocio$ (“House of Business”), and its Brazilian TikTok handle.

In just a few months, LED Mexico became the top news podcast in the country, according to the Spotify and Apple charts. LED Colombia and LED Argentina launched after Mexico’s success and now also lead the charts in those markets in the business bews categories.

Casa de Negocio$, its Web series that connects C-suites and business personalities in mansions around Brazil, has renewed for a second season with the support of companies like Airbnb, Banco Itau, Google, Microsoft, and WeWork to name a few. And on TikTok, Brazil’s handle reached an astounding 160,000 followers and millions of video views, attracting interest from advertisers. 

But how did a media company manage to achieve all that?

As per Falic Media, the company responsible for running and operating the venture, it was by creating a model of remote collaboration between integrated newsrooms, multimedia specialists, developers, and social media.

All this was done with a clear strategy: accuracy and time to market, while considering younger audiences, such as Gen Zs and Millennials, as one of their top audience targets — a demographic most often ignored by financial news media.

Bloomberg Línea uses a range of digital tools and strategies to grow its audience in three languages (Spanish, Portuguese, and English), serving unique and tailor-made content in Latin America and the Caribbean and about the region.

Currently, Bloomberg Línea has contributors present in 19 countries, operating 18 sites in total; 16 dedicated to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, a general-oriented LATAM one and a section in English.

“Driving a world-class operation to provide content in multiple formats to millions is not easy, but the brand counts with a passionate team to make this work,” said Philipe.

A fully remote operation

The newsroom, commercial, and marketing sides were handpicked throughout the region at a time when analysts and policymakers were talking about an imminent post-pandemic economic recovery and a war between Russia and Ukraine was just a possibility.

As the team was recruiting and hiring staff with international experience, it constructed a modern and sturdy Web platform and developed a launch strategy that would enable the site to reach a large volume of readers in a relatively short period. 

One of Bloomberg Línea’s plans is to grow the business with paid subscriptions to its sites, as well as free registration to its newsletters. This has revealed another big challenge in this arena: how to successfully navigate Latin American differences in media consumption. Some markets are more prone to pay for premium content than others.

“We think we have a winning formula to overcome these challenges,” said Philipe. “We have premium and timely content that considers global issues to explain the business and financial world to audiences, but also expose what’s happening in local markets to a bigger audience.”

Bloomberg Línea’s journalists produce more than 150 original stories per day, including interviews with top business and political leaders and investigative pieces that have triggered new conversations across distribution platforms.

This work is supported by a social media strategy that takes advantage of traditional platforms but also sought to leverage additional players such as TikTok. This proved to be a huge success in Brazil.

By June 2022, more than 25 million visitors had come to its sites, and more than 40 advertising clients had run campaigns. This is the culmination of almost a year of hard work, consolidating Bloomberg Línea’s position on its path to become the leading financial and business news source in Latin America.

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