As A+E Networks and Vice prepare to debut Viceland on Feb. 29, the advertising team behind the new cable network is making an attractive offer to advertisers: less commercial clutter, custom content and pod takeovers, reports Ad Age.

Advertisers also will have the opportunity to sponsor programming in different ways, meaning that some programs or dayparts may not even have commercials. In some cases, marketers will able to “tap into Vice’s content marketing studio and utilize its talent to create content,” reports Ad Age.

Approaching advertising in this way is probably necessary if Viceland is to attract the millennial audiences its targeting. Six-minute pods full of 30-second spots is probably one of the quickest ways to turn this audience off and out.

“One thing they are doing is facilitating quick, easy content creation, which is great for advertisers,” one media buyer told the magazine’s Jeanine Poggi. “They are offering opportunities for advertisers to take over pods, but they are not reinventing the wheel here. That’s been done before.”

One conflict in this approach that media buyers are seeing is that Viceland is setting its CPMs (costs per thousands) at a premium, “more than some fully distributed, top-10 cable networks,” says Ad Age, but concurrently setting ratings guarantees very low.

As Gawker puts it: “Advertisers on Viceland will be able to pay ESPN prices for Azteca Network ratings.”

Viceland will debut with eight original series, all produced by Vice, and some film acquisitions.

Brief Take: If Vice’s content-marketing/commercial-light approach works, this may be a model that other cable networks want to imitate, to the benefit of both advertisers and audiences. Whether the network can charge premium prices for a small audience—even if that audience is demographically desirable—is another question.

Read more: Ad Age and for a snarkier take: Gawker

[Image courtesy of Vice Media LLC]

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