VIDA launched in 2018 with a mission to help the startup media sector in the UK to solve the scale challenge - growing audience, building revenues and finding investment for growth.

We identified and defined these diverse creative businesses as “Next Generation Media” or NGMs because they shared certain characteristics that set them apart from the established content and media businesses:

We were clearly on to something.

Brian Morrissey described it as finding ‘riches in niches’ writing in his newsletter, The Rebooting, about the acquisition of Industry Dive by Informa.

Since then, despite a global pandemic and ongoing economic volatility we have worked with founders of these ‘NGM’ startups, sitting on advisory boards, undertaking commercial and brand consulting projects and mentorships, and we have devised and delivered an M&A advisory programme for an international media corporate to enable them to engage with, invest in and acquire NGMs.

We’ve also released annual Next Generation Media lists profiling the most relevant and interesting Next-Generation Media Brands in the UK, strengthening our relationships with the startup businesses redefining the rules of media and marketing.

But now there’s a problem facing Next-Gen Media.. Several, in fact.

The last few months have seen a trickle of bad news about media and digital startups.

The promise of the creator economy hasn’t delivered, yet, with no sign of the ‘creator middle class’ and a concentration of audience and revenues in a small number of creator mega brands.

In the US, Vice Media is looking for a buyer at a knock-down valuation, and Buzzfeed news is closing down.

And in the UK, trailblazing gal-dem - committed to telling the stories of people of colour from marginalised genders - announced last month that it was closing.

So what’s behind this?

Crazy valuations - positioning as tech propositions to get a tech valuation.

This was partly because ‘media’ had become a loaded term for investors who associate it with audience-based businesses that are either in long-term decline, or are spending huge amounts of money on content and marketing to win and keep their audience in the face of escalating competition, including new entrants.

There’s evidence of hubris, with the people running 21st-century digital media companies repeating some of the errors of 20th century editorial corporate culture…

But the bottom line is that the media / publishing business destroyed a lot of value in the switch to digital - especially programmatic - and is now scrambling to rebuild first-party data moats, and reestablish and rebuild editorial value propositions.

The challenge here is that big social platforms continue to eat up traditional media's audience, with evidence of changing behaviour - for example where people get their news, or time spent on platforms vs traditional media.

So the biggest issue of all, is also the most fundamental; next-generation media has a business model problem:

Audience development is expensive
Subs are hard to scale
Impact on investor sentiment

Thankfully, NGMs have an advantage:

What they don’t have is scale.

Leading to the emergence of new business, operating, funding and growth models:

Aggregators - Dotdash (now part of Meredith)
New-style holding companies - Authentic Brands, Animoca
Diversified VC / VBs - Red Ventures / Recurrent
A whole (unregulated) sector of L&D offerings (Fake gurus…!)
Paid-for accelerator programmes out of reach of early-stage founders
Increased pledges of public funding / grants / tax incentives from government and its agencies - which are often implemented badly

So, this calls for a next-generation approach:

The VIDA NGM Network

Our mission has always been to help next gen media startups, creators and established brands to grow, and now we're taking that one step further with the VIDA NGM Network.

Alongside the UK’s most innovative content scaleups and community-powered businesses, we’ll explore the NGM business model and tackle the biggest issues facing media and digital startups, together.

A think-tank. A community. A structured and independent sharing of knowledge and experience. A next generation approach.

To the community-powered startups and next-generation media brands:

We’ll provide a focused problem-solving programme to explore the fundamental issues affecting your business
We’ll support you by connecting you with the organisations and the means to power your growth
We’ll bring you together with your peers in an open and democratic environment to share the journey - the highs, the lows and the learnings
We’ll share the knowledge we’ve built up over decades of helping next-gen creator driven businesses just like yours to achieve their goals

Our programme of events will include Q&A sessions, a speaker series, a mentor programme, investor days, M&A intros and commercial partnership opportunities.

If you’re interested in joining us or have any questions about becoming part of the network, please fill out your details here and a member of the team will be in contact, or send an email to emma.rees@vidamedia.co.uk.

Introducing: the VIDA Next Generation Media Network

VIDA launched in 2018 with a mission to help the startup media sector in the UK to solve the scale challenge - growing audience, building revenues and finding investment for growth.

We identified and defined these diverse creative businesses as “Next Generation Media” or NGMs because they shared certain characteristics that set them apart from the established content and media businesses:

We were clearly on to something.

Brian Morrissey described it as finding ‘riches in niches’ writing in his newsletter, The Rebooting, about the acquisition of Industry Dive by Informa.

We’ve also released annual Next Generation Media lists profiling the most relevant and interesting Next-Generation Media Brands in the UK, strengthening our relationships with the startup businesses redefining the rules of media and marketing.

But now there’s a problem facing Next-Gen Media.. Several, in fact.

The last few months have seen a trickle of bad news about media and digital startups.

The promise of the creator economy hasn’t delivered, yet, with no sign of the ‘creator middle class’ and a concentration of audience and revenues in a small number of creator mega brands.

In the US, Vice Media is looking for a buyer at a knock-down valuation, and Buzzfeed news is closing down.

And in the UK, trailblazing gal-dem - committed to telling the stories of people of colour from marginalised genders - announced last month that it was closing.

So what’s behind this?

Crazy valuations - positioning as tech propositions to get a tech valuation.

There’s evidence of hubris, with the people running 21st-century digital media companies repeating some of the errors of 20th century editorial corporate culture…

But the bottom line is that the media / publishing business destroyed a lot of value in the switch to digital - especially programmatic - and is now scrambling to rebuild first-party data moats, and reestablish and rebuild editorial value propositions.

The challenge here is that big social platforms continue to eat up traditional media's audience, with evidence of changing behaviour - for example where people get their news, or time spent on platforms vs traditional media.

So the biggest issue of all, is also the most fundamental; next-generation media has a business model problem:

Audience development is expensive

Subs are hard to scale

Impact on investor sentiment

Thankfully, NGMs have an advantage:

What they don’t have is scale.

Leading to the emergence of new business, operating, funding and growth models:

Aggregators - Dotdash (now part of Meredith)

New-style holding companies - Authentic Brands, Animoca

Diversified VC / VBs - Red Ventures / Recurrent

A whole (unregulated) sector of L&D offerings (Fake gurus…!)

Paid-for accelerator programmes out of reach of early-stage founders

Increased pledges of public funding / grants / tax incentives from government and its agencies - which are often implemented badly

So, this calls for a next-generation approach:

The VIDA NGM Network

Our mission has always been to help next gen media startups, creators and established brands to grow, and now we're taking that one step further with the VIDA NGM Network.

Alongside the UK’s most innovative content scaleups and community-powered businesses, we’ll explore the NGM business model and tackle the biggest issues facing media and digital startups, together.

A think-tank. A community. A structured and independent sharing of knowledge and experience. A next generation approach.

To the community-powered startups and next-generation media brands:

We’ll provide a focused problem-solving programme to explore the fundamental issues affecting your business

We’ll support you by connecting you with the organisations and the means to power your growth

We’ll bring you together with your peers in an open and democratic environment to share the journey - the highs, the lows and the learnings

We’ll share the knowledge we’ve built up over decades of helping next-gen creator driven businesses just like yours to achieve their goals

Our programme of events will include Q&A sessions, a speaker series, a mentor programme, investor days, M&A intros and commercial partnership opportunities.

If you’re interested in joining us or have any questions about becoming part of the network, please fill out your details here and a member of the team will be in contact, or send an email to emma.rees@vidamedia.co.uk.