"We don't believe in pre-rolls," said Penry Price, director of North American sales for Google, at an industry conference in New York. He said Google is currently testing other methods of serving video ads, including postroll ads and interstitials, but hasn't yet settled on a monetization scheme for YouTube. "We have a long way to go in video," he said at the AlwaysOn Media conference.

YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley said this weekend that the company intends to launch a new monetization system that will include sharing revenue with contributors. YouTube has not publicly stated that it plans to add pre-roll ads to videos. But in a BBC interview after announcing YouTube's plan to start paying video contributors, Hurley said the site may begin running three-second spots before videos.

Price was echoing comments made earlier in the panel by Curt Hecht, executive vice president and chief digital officer for GM/Planworks. Hecht, who has previously criticized pre-roll ads, asserted that the pre-roll model "just doesn't cut it." "It's not really helping us get the experience out there," he said. "It's an interruptive model."

But Brian Quinn, vice president of sales and marketing for Dow Jones Online, said marketers continue to buy pre-roll. "The demand is there from the advertisers," he said. Quinn added that the post-roll format has major problems as well. "We'll put your 30 or 60 back there, but I don't know if anyone's going to watch it," he said.

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