Ebiquity acquires ‘Bloomberg Terminal for media pros’ to give clients direct access to market intel, data

Marketers can dive into all of this through an online portal. It’s like a hub of news, executive summaries, original sources, metadata, and wisdom from Ebiquity’s top brass, plus some hand-picked guest experts. What’s more, there’s a financial section that keeps tabs on selected media stocks. This section offers an alternative perspective, allowing marketers to gauge the performance of the industry’s heavyweights from a unique vantage point. Lastly, there’s a research section with curated reports from renowned traded bodies and businesses that can be accessed by marketers.

The portal, now rebranded as Ebiquity Transmit, is open to everyone for free throughout the rest of the year. Come 2024, some features might become exclusive to Ebiquity clients or accessible only to paid subscribers. Needless to say, the media management firm is still ironing out the nitty-gritty of the business model for its latest acquisition. 

“We are not entirely sure yet at this moment, but the plan is to deploy a freemium model with high value benefits for paying subscribers,” said Schreurs. ”As this is a syndicated service, we will open it up to the wider industry instead of just current Ebiquity clients, in line with our vision: ‘Creating a Better Media World, Together’.”

Bouke de Vries, who leads Ebiquity’s client operations team, will oversee the product alongside his current duties. He’ll collaborate with another executive while having the flexibility to take advantage of the expertise and technology from the wider Ebiquity network as needed. Not surprisingly, the vision is to scale up Ebiquity Transmit into a more substantial offering over time. Nevertheless, Schreurs emphasized that it will be a business operated with maximum efficiency.

His comment touches on a fundamental truth in the world of publishing: it’s a long-term game that requires patience. While Ebiquity Transmit might appear to be a marketing endeavor, it’s essential to understand that it may not yield rapid results. Instead, it could take several months, or even years, for carefully orchestrated corporate media initiatives like this to show tangible outcomes. In publishing, consistency and patience often serve as a competitive advantage.

“The industry develops so fast, that we have a very strong knowledge management system in place internally,” said Schreurs. “This, however, is an opportunity for us to make this available to the wider industry to ensure critical developments get disseminated appropriately and people can effortlessly stay up to date.”

This aspiration might face challenges as Ebiquity’s media ambitions continue to expand. With growth, it becomes increasingly complex to define and preserve independence.

“You have to be transparent with the market and also honest with yourself when you do something like this,” said Justin Pearse, a former business journalist who co-founded communications agency BlueStripe Media and is now the editor of its trade title New Digital Age. “When BlueStripe Media started we said we would write about our clients but also everyone else so we couldn’t have been more transparent about our intentions. Moreover, we knew that New Digital Age wasn’t going to be as respected as an independent title — at least to begin with, anyway.”