Google owns YouTube. YouTube is an extremely popular video web site. Yet Google isn’t exactly sure about how to make money from it. Or at least they’ve put on the appearance as such. In reality they know exactly how to make money from YouTube.

Commercials.

Affiliate and cable television make money by selling advertising time. For every 30 minutes of television time there is 8 minutes of commercials. The 22-minute “half-hour” show has been a staple of television programming for decades.

Using commercials is the only proven method that makes money with broadcasted video.

You have seen commercials on the web already from other video sites that place a 5 to 15 second advert before the video presentation actually starts. This is called a “pre-roll”.

This is the only way to make money with video. Banners don’t work. Text doesn’t work. Overlays don’t work. Nothing, repeat, nothing works as well as true-blue commercials. Anything else is a waste of time.

And that’s why YouTube is most likely going to go this route.

When you see these pre/post-rolls on your favorite YouTube videos, it will make you upset. It will make you wish for a time when there weren’t any commercials. You will be saddened by this.

The good times will soon be over.

Will this kill YouTube? Nope. It will make YouTube what its proponents have been saying all along - a replacement for television. Well, now it will be. But not in the way you thought.