It was inevitable, but news is leaking out that YouTube will begin to monetize videos themselves. Fred Wilson cites Chad Hurley talking about a three second pre-roll ad.

One good thing is that it appears they will share revenue with the user. One wonders though if this will cause even more attempts at gaming YouTube to get traffic and just make moderation an even bigger issue for them.

It will also be a good test of the very short pre-roll model, will three second ads be tolerable to the vast YouTube audience?