Dive Brief:
- According to Vice’s chief digital officer, who spoke with Ad Exchanger, the media brand produces 5,000 pieces of content each day. Its challenge is deciding what content to distribute via other platforms and on which social media channel from among, for example, its Snapchat Discover channel, YouTube and Facebook.
- CDO Mike Germano said the key metric Vice tracks is unfollows, particularly on Facebook, saying an unfollow represents a break in trust with how much branded content Vice is delivering to its audience.
- Vice uses tools including Krux, a data management platform, and Unified, a marketing platform, to determine what content to share on what social media outlet as well as track the results of those shares.
Dive Insight:
“If we are just selling out our audience, they will start leaving,” Germano told Ad Exchanger. "We’re not only tactical about targeting and distribution, we have to make sure our readers want to read an article or watch a video series. That's where we're really using Unified."
On its own properties, Vice Media is known as one of several new-breed publishers that also include Vox Media, Mic and Refinery29 that are actively resisting ad tech and programmatic ad sales on their sites in favor of directly selling to advertisers.
Vice’s recently-launched cable channel, Viceland, is taking an innovative stance to spots on its shows by running fewer ads per hour than most cable channels and looking to fill half of that inventory with native advertising instead of more traditional TV ads.
About that decision, Eddy Moretti, co-president of Viceland and Vice’s chief creative officer, earlier told The Wall Street Journal, “We are trying to displace the clutter by injecting some humanity and authenticity. If we create a user experience that is more engaging than what else is on the dial, people won’t flip.”
