Viacom's Atom.com should be called Ad'em.com

Viacom has released Atom.com (CNET), a rebranding of longtime web video site AtomFilms. 

Atom's initial homepage is a potpourri of the kind of comedy on a shoestring not quite made famous by Heavy.com, SuperDeluxe.com, AtomicWedgieTV.com or FunnyOrDie.com. 

One would think that a new entrant into this stickily saturated field would want to distinguish itself immediately with some stunning new feature, angle or technology. But Atom is substantially similar to all other comedy sites, both in appearance and in content. 

Granted, I did not watch all 20,000 videos the site has available. I watched only a few, and that's because every one I looked at contained at least a 10-second pre-roll ad. I had to swallow the same 30-second Twix commercial three times and an ad for Verizon wireless the other seven. And this was all in the space of about five minutes. I can't think of a site that makes you watch a commercial before every single video, let alone the same two ads over and over. 

Ad blasting at that level verily screams at viewers not to come back -- and, worse, it makes the site look desperate for cash. Which we all are, because this is the Internet, but it's not necessarily the best first and repeated impression.

Still, perhaps we can chalk it up to a launch-time glitch or a bit of overeagerness on the part of Atom's ad sales team. The channel also has a set of six original Web comedies from Comedy Central, which I will watch as soon as the image of the Verizon phone fades from my retinas.

Comments

[John Collins]

Atom.com is a complete mess. I had uploaded a video that had completely disappeared. No message or email to me, it just disappeared.

Maybe that's why it's "Beta". (More like "Delta").