Murdoch Jabs YouTube, Says Web Will Be Big Profit Driver

In between dissing Judith Regan, talking up Bloomberg as a great potential presidential candidate, and downplaying a fundraiser he threw for Hillary Clinton, Rupert Murdoch did say a few things about News Corp’s online media business this morning. He was interviewed during a jam-packed morning keynote at McGraw-Hill’s Media Summit in NYC.

MySpace, of course, was a hot topic. In terms of ad revenue, he said the site garners $2 million each month, and that’s growing almost 30 percent each quarter. Oh, and that Google search ad revenue share cash isn’t hurting either.

Speaking of Google, Murdoch noted MySpace decided it needed to compete with the search firm on video once Google “politely refused to share [YouTube] with us.” Actually, that implied resentment feeds into the theme of a minor Google/MySpace clash floated yesterday by The Wall Street Journal.

Of course, Murdoch couldn’t resist taking a little jab at the tube, comparing it to his firm’s reigning social networking champ: “[YouTube is] not much of a community site. It’s an experience, and it can be quite hypnotic,” he said.

As for in-video ads on the video-sharing site, he continued, if YouTube interrupts video with ads, “[users] will be over to us quite quickly.”

Murdoch also prognosticated about what percentage of the overall revenue pie News Corp’s Web business might represent in five years. He pegged it at over 10 percent, adding it will be the “biggest profit driver that we’ll have.”