Dive Brief:

• Vice Media has consolidated its diverse business interests under the newly formed Virtue Worldwide, per reporting by The Wall Street Journal. 
• The new company includes Vice’s core digital publishing business, the cable network it established last year and the various other businesses it has launched and acquired such as longstanding in-house creative agency Virtue and Carrot Creative, a specialty digital and mobile agency Vice acquired in 2013.
• The plan behind Virtue Worldwide is to take all of Vice's various assets and turn them into a single agency that helps marketers create TV and digital content for younger demographics across the globe, per the Journal.

Dive Insight:

Vice’s move to create Virtue Worldwide is the latest example of a publisher taking active control over its entire business, from content creation and distribution to, perhaps more interestingly, marketing and advertising operations across media networks. In the past, marketing, advertising and publishing have operated in connected but distinct silos, but that ecosystem is blurring together as formats like branded content earn more mind share and spend. 

While native advertising is slowly taking over the marketing budgets that used to be put toward digital, the format is still going through hurdles. Renewal rates for native ads disappointed in 2016 as publishers struggled to effectively implement and measure their impact for advertising partners. Vice is obviously looking to avoid this issue and better streamline the process with its latest initiative. 

According to Virtue Worldwide's CEO Lars Hemming Jorgensen, the company aims to introduce efficiencies into the process of working with Vice Media and its network of businesses, offering marketing clients a more involved strategic role. Jorgensen told the Journal that Virtue Worldwide eliminates brands having to hire different people and agencies along with the multiple margins and disconnection in communication that creates.