BloomberQuint, an Indian business and financial news organization, a joint venture of Bloomberg News and Quintillion Media, has won Gold at South Asian Digital Media Awards 2020. This award, presented by WAN-IFRA, the World Association of News Publishers, recognises South Asian publishers who have delivered original digital media projects or work during the last 12 months. Projects cover anything from new approaches to digital subscriptions to impactful native advertising campaigns.
BQ Blue, BloombergQuint’s premium subscription offering that delivers exclusive content in the form of subscriber-only stories, live shows, podcasts, newsletters, and events received Gold for Best Paid Content Strategy. BloombergQuint has over time put in place a well-honed hybrid model that fetches subscribers exclusive benefits. Readers are offered free, metered, and hard paywall stories. To increasingly engage with Indian audiences and to familiarise them with BQ Blue, BloombergQuint also launched a pay-per-article feature which allowed readers to pay a nominal amount and gain exposure to BQ Blue content on the website.
As a Gold winner at the South Asian Digital Media Awards 2020, BQ Blue will now be part of the nominees for the World Digital Media Awards, competing with other winners from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and North America.
The world award winners will be announced later this year. This is the second time BloombergQuint is being recognised at the South Asian Digital Media Awards. In 2019, BloombergQuint won Silver for Best Paid Content Strategy. BloombergQuint was also among eight news organizations from the Asia Pacific region selected for Google News Initiative’s Subscription Lab, a programme that helps publishers strengthen their digital subscription capabilities for better dissemination of content.
Talking about the win, Anil Uniyal, CEO, BloombergQuint, said, “We at BloombergQuint are absolutely delighted by winning gold at WAN IFRA’s South Asian Digital Media Awards 2020 for our subscription product, BQ Blue. Our rigorous focus on quality and credible content as well as product innovation has powered us. Today, 40,000-plus paid subscribers validate our premium BQ Blue product, and this recognition is an additional booster. This win comes close on the heels of our WhatsApp content distribution strategy becoming a Harvard Business Review case study. These successes motivate us to continue to innovate, improve, and invest in offering a world-class product to our subscribers.”
The other winners of South Asian Digital Media Awards 2020 along with BloombergQuint are BBC News, NDTV, The Hindu, Malayala Manorama, as well as BloombergQuint’s sister brand, The Quint.
