Eyeballs vs content, which matters most?

This question seems to be the new chicken and the egg. One side of the argument says that to get eyeballs, you have to have quality content. The other side quips that you need to have eyeballs to justify delivering the quality content.

Viacom's recent decision that forced YouTube to remove over 100,000 clips shows they put their stock in the content. It's more of the "if you build it they will come" approach. Viacom is creating their own site(s) to handle the video and embedding. YouTube, on the other hand, thinks that the huge number of eyeballs they already reach are the most important part of the equation. We'll soon see who is correct.

I personally tend to take YouTube's side. I think there is plenty wrong with their model, mind you, and they're surely not the last video phenomenon that will come along. But...they have the eyeballs. Consumers are gaining more control over the experience online and it won't be too much longer before companies are forced to realize this.

Consumers want to go to a single place to watch video clips. They don't want to have to jump from one site to another. In the end, the site with the most aggregated content may just win out and other video will go by the wayside.

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marketing, Google, YouTube, Viacom