Businessmodel of Vox Media

Customer Segments

Vox Media operates eight media outlets and brands, serving a range of customers. The Company’s customers can be organised into two categories: general consumers and advertisers.

Vox Media’s brands collectively attract approximately 170 million unique monthly visitors, and around 785 million monthly content views. The Company’s outlets are typically targeted at a consumer base aged between 25 and 49, principally comprising college-educated millennials. Through its eight different media outlets, the Company targets consumers with a variety of interests, video games, technology, politics and current events, fashion, culture, food and drink, and internet trends. As an online media platform, the Company serves consumers across multiple jurisdictions, with a focus primarily on English-speaking countries such as its native US and the UK.

Vox Media’s platforms also provide a large audience for advertisers, brand marketers and commercial entities to exploit. This includes native advertising solutions and more traditional display advertising services.

Value Propositions

Vox Media provides value to its customers in the following ways;

• Its quality original content, with the Company generating large amounts of original content across its regularly updated outlets, providing high-quality reporting and up-to-date coverage;
• Its broad spectrum of subject coverage, with the Company’s brands and outlets covering a broad range of subjects, including sports, current events, politics, culture, internet trends, food and drink, design, video games, and technology;
• Its large online audience, with the Company attracting a monthly readership of around 170 million unique users across its multiple outlets, with advertisers able to target their marketing campaigns at specific audiences and user demographics; and
• Its proprietary publishing technology, with the Company publishing its content on its proprietary Chorus platform, which provides detailed analytics and user insights, community moderation and social interactivity, branded content creation, and proprietary advertising products. ### Channels

Vox Media operates a website at www.voxmedia.com, through which it provides information on its various services, activities, and brands. The Company operates eight media brands, through which it publishes unique and original content on a variety of subjects. These publications include Vox, its flagship news and current events portal; SB Nation, its sports publication; technology news publication The Verge; design-focused publication Curbed; internet rends outlet Recode; fashion publication Racked; and food publication Eater. Several of the Company’s publications also deliver content to consumers through mobile apps, available on iOS and Android.

Vox Media employs a specialist sales teams for its advertising customers, with which advertisers, brand marketers, and commercial entities are able to deal with directly. The Company’s sales personnel operate out of the Company’s network of offices – spanning New York, Chicago, Washington DC, San Francisco and Los Angeles – with each of Vox Media’s publications providing their own advertising solutions.

Customer Relationships

Vox Media provides its content to consumers on a self-service basis, with customers able to access the Company’s media offerings independently through its websites and mobile applications. These channels are free to use and do not require any interaction with Vox Media personnel.

Vox Media provides advertising solutions to commercial customers through its direct sales team, who consult with clients closely in order to ensure that their needs are met and that advertisements are in line with the Company’s guidelines. The Company seeks to establish recurring business from its advertising customers.

Vox and its many publications can be contacted directly by customers by phone, email, and online contact forms, with the Company providing personalised responses to queries and enquiries. The Company also interact with its customers through various community features across its publications, as well as individual social media accounts for its various brands, including with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Key Activities

Vox Media operates as a digital media company. It is principally engaged in the creation and distribution of online and mobile content, primarily targeted at an audience of educated millennials.

The Company distributes content to consumers through eight branded publications: SB Nation, an online sports media brand and network of fan-focused sports communities; The Verge, a technology news website; Polygon, a gaming news website; Vox.com, an interest news publication; Eater, a food and dining publication; Racked, a shopping, beauty, and fashion publication; Curbed, a real estate and design publication; and Recode, a tech business publication. The Company provides a range of advertising solutions to advertisers and brand marketers across its portfolio of publications.

Key Partners

Vox Media works closely with a range of companies and organisations in the development and delivery of its content and advertising solutions. These partnerships can be categorised broadly as:

• Supplier and Vendor Partners, comprising a range of suppliers of tools, services, and technology that are used across the Company’s business and publications to support its development and distribution of online content;
• Platform Partners, comprising various online platform’s to which the Company publishes proprietary content, including Facebook’s Articles platform and Snapchat’s Discover feature;
• Advertising Partners, comprising a range of advertising agencies and technology providers that assist in developing and delivering effective online and mobile advertising solutions to commercial customers; and
• Strategic and Alliance Partners, comprising a range of companies and organisations with the Company collaborates on various projects and shares certain resources. Vox Media has recently launched several partnerships in relation to implementing its advertising solutions, including deals with MediaMath and OpenX, as well as a partnership with Operative to unify advertising sales across all eight of Vox Media’ brands.

Key Resources

Vox Media’s key resources are its intellectual properties and brands, its proprietary Chorus publishing platform, its media content and online platforms, its IT and communications infrastructure, its advertising solutions, its partnerships, and its personnel.

Vox Media utilises various technologies across it various brand platforms, notably its proprietary publishing platform. Searches of records published by the US Patent and Trademark Office, however, identified no patent applications in which Vox Media is named as applicant or assignee.

Cost Structure

Vox Media incurs costs in relation to the development of its technologies and publishing platform, the production of content across and management of its various brands, the maintenance of its IT and communications infrastructure, the implementation of marketing and advertising schemes, the contracting of service providers, the management of its partnerships, and the retention of its personnel.

The Company accrues occupancy and utility costs across its several offices across the US, as well as significant personnel costs associated with the payment of salaries and benefits to its employees.

Revenue Streams

Vox Media generates revenue through the production and distribution of online content. The Company’s revenue is derived specifically from the provision of various digital advertising solutions across its portfolio of eight media publications. The Company offers two principal advertising solutions:

• Branded content and editorial sponsorships, comprising revenue derived from the provision of native advertising solutions, whereby the Company or third parties produce compelling content on behalf of brands to promote certain products or ideas; and
• Traditional advertising, comprising revenue derived from more traditional forms of advertising, including display advertising. Vox Media remains a privately-owned company, and as such is not obliged to publish its financial performance results on its website. Recent reports estimate that Vox’s annual revenue was in the region of around $60 million in 2014/2015.