Domino's Gross-Out Video May Hurt YouTube's Rep, Too

You may have heard that the controversy du jour yesterday involved this video, posted on YouTube, in which two Domino's employees do things like put cheese in their noses first before placing it on the pizza. (I was too disgusted to watch the whole thing.)

While Domino's deals with the fallout, it's worth a minute to also wonder about the fallout for YouTube as it attempts to build out its advertising model. According to a story that ran earlier this week in Advertising Age, the site is so far only able to sell ads off of nine percent of its U.S. page views, and that's actually an improvement over where it was a year ago. But suppose Domino's, or some other advertiser with rafts of minimum-wage employees, started the week thinking it would be a good idea to place a big buy with YouTube? After yesterday, they may be reconsidering.

That's why deals like the one YouTube struck earlier this week with Universal Music Group, to form a Hulu-like site for music video content, makes so much sense. In addition to creating an "official" site for music content, the site, which will be called Vevo.com, will create a safer haven for advertisers. In fact, it could be that YouTube's ad model comes via a host of YouTube-hosted professional content sites, which would subsidize the more prurient content that too often ensures that most of YouTube is an advertiser-free zone.

Not everyone agrees that these YouTube-hosted incidents damage the site's reputation with advertisers. One member of my Twitter-verse, Tracey HopeRoss of Mom Central Consulting, told me in a tweet: "I'd be surprised if Domino's vid caused anyone 2 reconsider ad buys with YouTube-as it's merely the platform/delivery mechanism." As she's a research specialist and I'm a mere blogger, maybe you should listen to her instead of to me.