Vice is known to be the cherry on top of our modern times, a platform dedicated to youngsters, popular for its satirical and critical view over urban habits and underground culture from all corners of the world. Their permissive, laidback, eccentric tone of voice has appealed to large masses of young people who contribute, comment, like, share and believe in the statement Vice has been making for some years now: culture is degrading and our neo-postmodern era is focused on deconstructing realities rather than embracing real progress.
Due to its high public reach, Vice leaves the realm of indie, alternative culture and enters new landscapes, dominated by business partnerships and serious money making. Verizon communications declared yesterday that it will undoubtedly include content from Vice Media. Verizon thus follows a plan to develop wireless oriented OTT services to cater to the preferences of youngsters who are serious consumers of mobile content and much less likely to pay large amounts of money for cable TV services.
Verizon has sealed the deal with Vice media in an effort to strengthen awareness and gain more public for a video service ready for launch later this year. This is beneficial for Vice as well, as both companies strive to expand their reach among young, mobile connected users who are in a constant, consistent and progressive search for news and entertainment on their smartphones.
The new partnership with Vice perfectly harmonizes with Verizon’s initiative to license new programming aimed at mllennials first and foremost. The carrier is known to have similar deals with AwesomenessTV, a platform highly popular among young people. They are clearly inclined to win this new, flexible and thirsty for content crowd of users.
In its quest of growth, Verizon has recently sealed another dramatically expensive deal. The company has spent $4,4 billion on AOL Inc, partly to support the advertising feature of its video service.
On the other hand, Vice is no less of a player, as it recently signed content partnerships with companies such as HBO and Spotify. It has also closed partnerships for its content in several countries in Asia, Latin America and Europe.
The video service coming from Verizon will be available to all people with mobile phones, Verizon customers or not. The company declared that the service will have pieces of free content backed up by advertising. Some of its editorial strategy will count as a user’s data plan and another part will be defined as pay-per-view for its range of live events.
Image Source: tubefilter.com
