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Vice Media Native Advertising

Vice says its new cable TV channel 'Viceland' will revolutionise advertising

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By Tony Connelly, Sports Marketing Reporter

March 2, 2016 | 3 min read

Vice Media’s new cable TV channel, Viceland, is shaking things up on the advertising front with reduced ad loads and native ads styled more like editorial content.

Viceland

Viceland’s draw with a young audience and promise to revolutionise the traditional TV-ad model has attracted a plethora of advertisers who are looking for ways to reach the Netflix, ad-blocking generations.

Unilever PLC, Bank of America Corp., Diageo, Shinola, Bushmills, Mailchimp, Samsung, T-Mobile, Toyota Motor Corp have already signed on to the network which launched on Monday (29 February).

The network, which is a joint venture with A+E Networks, has shunned the traditional cable TV ad model which generally consists of 18 minutes of ads for every hour.

Instead Viceland has pledged to carry half that amount and is looking to reshape how its remaining ones look.

“We want to replace the 30-second spot when we can,” said Viceland general manager Guy Slattery.

He said that it wants “to do more of a custom, native advertising approach that works on-air but also across platforms. Vice has always been more successful when it's done native advertising and interesting custom partnerships with brands, and then you extend that idea to this TV network also".

Within a year the network is aiming to have native ads for half of its ad inventory and the brands on board with its new strategy are now in the early stages of working on this.

Unilever for example has a custom ad on the network which features a Vice employee talking about a digital-ad campaign she came up with for the company’s TRESemmé hair-product brand.

Another native ad for e-mail-marketing service MailChimp, features someone being interviewed for a local business owner and MailChimp user in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg section, located just down the street from Vice’s headquarters.

The ad pricing point is different because of the reduced ad load however the relatively small group of launch partners and exclusivity across some categories could yield results quicker and help build momentum going forward.

Nielsen and Nielsen has agreed to Vice Media's request to refrain from making its ratings public for the first six months to allow it to experiment outside the glare of media scrutiny.

Vice Media Native Advertising

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