By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

YouTube is finally monetizing their video clips – and the adverts are not bad at all.   Not really obtrusive or “in your face” as many users had feared they would be.

I was looking at the current Chad Vader video (which wasn’t that funny so I didn’t bother posting it on GAS) and right away, you will see an “Ads by Google” strip along the bottom of the video screen.

As you can see, this is easily closed by a small X box on the right hand side so no big deal.  But if you close it, the thin black bar still remains with an option to reopen the advert if you want to.

Then at the end, you have the Adsense adverts, related to what you have just been watching :

When Google started making noises some time back about monetizing YouTube, rumours starting leaking out that adverts would inserted in front of the video clips and users would be forced to watch those adverts before the video clips began.  Stories like this began to make YouTube users uneasy about Google’s exact plans for making a profit on YouTube and although anything can happen in the future, Google has proven that they can advertise and make a profit using subtle advertising like this.