And the YouTube blog entry talked about our FreeWeel/YouTube joint program to help partners helping themselves.  

Helping partners help themselves

Monday,July 27, 2009 | 9:13 AM

We'vebeen working hard to increase the amountof monetizable content available on YouTube, but we think it's alsoimportant to develop more effective ways for partners to monetize it. In somecases, we've worked with partners to leverage the strength of their own salesforces, so they can sell their own ads on YouTube. This has proven to be avaluable option for partners who can package together all their content foradvertisers, no matter where it's distributed online. Currently, about 50partners can sell their own ads against millions of impressions on YouTubeevery day.

Today we're announcing a trial with FreeWheel that will allow somepartners who sell their own ads to serve those ads directly into their videoson YouTube. (Previously, ads sold by these partners were still served byYouTube.) This will create a more centralized, streamlined process for partnersin the test program, making it easier for them to sell ads and make even moremoney from their content. This is an exciting development, because moreeffective monetization is good for everyone — more money for partners, largeand small, leads to the creation of even higher quality content, which leads toa better user experience and more opportunities for advertisers and the YouTubecommunity overall.

As we are in the early stages of this test, this feature is currently onlyavailable to a closed set of beta partners. Stay tuned for announcements whenwe expand the program in the near future.

Posted by Phil Farhi, Product Manager