SAN FRANCISCO, April 18 (UPI) -- The video-sharing site YouTube may begin offering advertising options for videos as soon as next week, it was announced during a Web expo in San Francisco.
Content creators who upload their videos will be offered a choice of having ads shown at the beginning or end, and share in resulting revenue 50-50, said Howard Lindzon, founder of finance-oriented Wallstrip, which distributes videos through YouTube.
Key to the new venture will be ensuring that people who upload the video actually own the rights, a problem that has vexed YouTube in the past, Variety reported Wednesday.
Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Google -- which bought YouTube for $1.65 billion last year -- hinted that advertising may be a way for YouTube to approach previously hostile copyright-holders.
YouTube, he said, is "a wonderful place for people to take copyrighted information, and, with our support, build ad-supported businesses."
Digital media analysts said they weren't surprised by the move because.
"A revenue-less YouTube wasn't going to last," said Josh Bernoff, an analyst at Forrester Research.
