IP Democracy: Viacom CEO: Our Site Traffic is Up Post You-Tube

Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman said yesterday that Viacom’s own web sites have seen a spike in traffic following the company’s decision to pull its videos from YouTube. Speaking at a at a Bear Stearns Cos. investment conference, Dauman said that soon after the company yanked 100,000 videos off of YouTube, a move prompted by the break-down in talks between YouTube’s owner Google and Viacom, “we found traffic increase on our own sites.”

That makes a lot of sense — Comedy Central’s “Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” are big draws and were among the most popular sources for videos on YouTube. The real question is: are these and other Viacom-related clips generating fewer overall viewers now than when they were on YouTube? In other words, Viacom’s own site traffic may have jumped, but it’s possible that fewer viewers are accessing Viacom-related clips now.

In any event, even if a YouTube deal would have generated more eyeballs for Viacom, Dauman said he doesn’t like the ambience of the site because professionally produced videos appear side-by-side with user-generated videos, creating an environment that makes it difficult to draw top-notch advertisers.

“Premium advertisers are not going to pay a lot for [video clips of] a cat going to the bathroom,” Dauman said.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on March 7, 2007 12:08 PM to IP Democracy