YouTubers to gain revenue from online videos

Social networkers who upload their own videos to the YouTube platform will soon have another reason to do so: money. According to reports, YouTube will begin giving a share of the ad revenue from online advertising, shown prior to videos, to the video producers.

by Kristina Knight

YouTube's founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are developing a model that will allow them to show video ads and also share part of the revenue. Revenue sharing is only available to those who own the full copyright of the material available for download.

Because of the new model, YouTube must begin screening all of the videos downloaded, estimated at 100 million every day, so that copyrighted videos aren't in the mix. Founder Chad Hurley told BBC News the model is expected to roll out in the next few months and will include a combination of short video clips and advertisements shown before the downloaded video.

Google purchased YouTube in October for $1.65 billion. But the buyout didn't stop the headache of purging copyrighted material being downloaded from the video sharing source. The company hopes to stem the flow of copyrighted material being downloaded with the development of "audio fingerprinting" technology that will identify clips.

Hurley says the new models will be rolled out one by one over the next few months.