• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, August 10, 2006

In another move to extend its online presence, Viacom's MTV Networks Wednesday said it agreed to purchase Atom Entertainment for $200 million.

With the acquisition, MTV Networks will gain Atom Entertainment's four major units: gaming sites Shockwave.com and AddictingGames.com, and short-form video sites AtomFilms.com and AddictingClips.com. Combined, the sites drew about 9.3 million unique visitors last month, according to comScore Networks.

The deal is one of several high-profile online moves MTV Networks has made recently. Earlier this week, the company said it tapped Google to distribute video clips "SpongeBob Squarepants," "Laguna Beach," and the "MTV Video Music Awards." That agreement calls for Google to place video clips, accompanied by ads, on Web sites of select publishers in the AdSense network; Viacom will sell ads and revenue split between itself, the publishers and Google.

MTV Networks also recently acquired Y2M: Youth Media & Marketing Networks, which publishes 2,000 print and 450 online student newspapers. Stephen Friedman, general manager of MTV's 24-hour college network, mtvU, estimated that Y2M's online audience of 5 million college students, combined with mtvU's 7 million, would result in a total audience of 9 million uniques.

Atom Entertainment, formed in 2001 from the merger of Atom Films and Shockwave.com, was one of the Web's first video portals. In March, the company branched out into user-created videos.