A few days ago YouTube announced that it would begin a program to share revenue generated from user content on its site with the people creating and uploading videos.  More than a few were asking how YouTube planned to generate that revenue and the answer they received wasn't what most would consider good news:  pre-roll advertisements.

Pre-roll ads are short (hopefully) video clips that you must watch before the video you're trying to see is played.  We've talked about pre-roll advertisements before - from the challenge of finding a replacement to pre-roll advertisements to ways to make the advertising option more viable.

Kevin Kelleher, writing for TheStreet.com, has written a fantastic view of the current state of the Google/YouTube situation.  He talks about the revenue-sharing announcement, the dreaded pre-roll, and some possible motivations behind Google's decision to go that route.  Perhaps, he says, Google and YouTube are bring pressured by big media to implement the system.  They might know it won't work but they're going to do it anyway so they can prove it's failure to the big guys.

Despite staggering numbers suggesting that pre-roll will fail, it appears that Google is going ahead with the format.  It's a move that Kelleher says will like damage YouTube's reputation and popularity (as well as Google's).  I love his statement about Google's success: 

The company's success is based on advertising that is useful, or at least nonintrusive. 

That is 100% the honest truth.  Boiled down to its finer bits, that statement sums up Google in a nutshell.  So it would seem to me that Google's goal with YouTube should be something along the same lines.  And that isn't going to be pre-roll.  If, and only if, they can figure out a way to do the same thing with YouTube, I'd say they'll hit a home run.

Let's just hope the next batter up to the plate is a better player than pre-roll advertising.