Of the existing verticals the biggest by far is the Creators Project, which highlights the role of technology in the artistic process. The project is entirely underwritten by Intel, which reached out to Vice in 2009 about a partnership and ended up with agreements to spend “tens of millions of dollars over many years,” according to Intel’s chief marketing officer, Deborah Conrad.

The genesis of the Creators Project serves as a microcosm of the emerging digital- content paradigm that Vice is helping to shape. Intel spends plenty on traditional advertising: The chipmaker’s marketing budget for 2010 was $6.3 billion. But traditional ads are simply no longer an effective means of reaching young consumers, who are getting ever more of their media calories from online video, mobile apps and even videogames, says Conrad. “An 18-year-old isn’t just sitting back in front of a TV watching channels and getting blasted with commercials,” she says. “It was obvious that for us to introduce our brand to that group of people, we had to do it in a way that was authentic to the way they consume content.”

Intel is far from the only major marketer having this epiphany. “You have all these new opportunities to be directly connected to your consumer and all these new platforms that need content but aren’t yet fully funding it,” says Ben Silverman, chairman of Electus, a “next generation” studio owned by IAC. Working closely with marketers from the concept stage on, Electus has produced series for NBC, MTV and the Food Network, among others. “A lot of advertisers are looking in and saying, ‘We want to play in this new world,’” says Silverman.