• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, August 16, 2006

IAC/InterActiveCorp. has acquired a majority stake in the parent company of comedy Web site College Humor.com, which offers videos, articles, and jokes aimed at a college-age audience.

CollegeHumor is the first site to be acquired by IAC Programming, the unit formed in January to buy or create online properties that appeal to loyal, well-defined communities.

With the deal, IAC gained a 51 percent share and full voting control of parent Connected Ventures. Co-founders Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen, childhood friends who founded CollegeHumor while in college in 1999, will continue to oversee the site. The company didn't disclose the financial terms, but the deal was pegged at $20 million by the New York Post.

Moshe Koyfman, vice president of IAC programming, said CollegeHumor exemplifies the type of Web companies it's looking for to fill out its portfolio: a site that caters to a defined demographic and incorporates video and other entertainment and e-commerce elements.

Comedy has emerged as a hot content niche on the Web. Social networking sites such as MySpace have recently launched comedy channels, while acquisition rumors have surfaced about other satirical sites including The Onion's. But Koyfman said the CollegeHumor deal isn't the start of a roll-up strategy for IAC. "I would say as this relates to comedy, we're really looking at this as our platform to do a lot of things," he said.

Through Connected Ventures, Abramson and Van Veen have pursued other projects including The CollegeHumor Guide to College, retail site BustedTees.com, and entertainment site AllDumb.com. The CollegeHumor sites had 1.8 million monthly users in July, when most college students are off for the summer, and 2 million in June, according to comScore MediaMetrix.

CollegeHumor is continuing to build out its ad sales force and will increasingly seek to work with advertisers to devise creative campaigns that reflect the irreverent nature of the site. As an example, he referred to a current video promotion on the site for the upcoming film "Beerfest," that involves the staging of a Beer-lympics pitting the College Boys against the Townie Team. "I think we'll see a continuing effort to work on things that are not standard banner ads," said Koyfman.