Vice Media has built a billion-dollar company by declaring itself as the news source with a direct line to hip millennials. But the company’s remarkable success to date is based largely on convincing brand marketers to pay a big premium for the ineffable “cool” factor—a strategy that could prove hard to sustain in the long run.
Vice is among the handful of next-generation online publishers that have successfully positioned themselves as quasi-digital ad agencies, leveraging a corporate image to get advertisers to fund expensive content through co-branded efforts. The millions that Vice and rivals such as BuzzFeed and Vox Media command from advertisers has helped them avoid the inexorable downward trend in online ad rates.
