• John Battelle's Searchblog, Monday, January 29, 2007 11:17 AM

After speaking with CEO Chad Hurley at the same conference in Switzerland, search luminary John Battelle surmises that the new rev share program would likely present producers with a series of options, as well as middle, after, banner or even button, ads.

Battelle also points to revenue generator hints from postings on the Google Blog, the company's public-facing blog. He says Google Video, the advertising system, will become a crucial component to AdSense, its publisher network. Indeed, the posting makes it sound as though Ad Sense will become more of an ad-supported content distribution network for video, offering publishers categories of video to display in the form of "playlists."

"The real question," Battelle asks, "is whether, over time, YouTube will require that folks run some kind of advertising in order to gain access to its massive distribution engine." Are the days of free advertising the likes of Coke and Dove enjoyed in the form of uploaded videos (which YouTube didn't make a cent from) numbered?

Read the whole story at John Battelle's Searchblog »