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Talk has been going on for awhile on the idea of YouTube (GOOG) taking steps toward sharing revenue with owners of video content uploaded to the site. It looks like that may shortly become a reality.

Citing Howard Lindzon, Variety says that "Content creators who upload their videos to the site will be offered the option of having short ads shown at the beginning or end, with the resulting revenues split 50-50."

This isn't a surprise as we talk a lot at thealphamarketer about the world of advertising-free video as a nice thought; but in reality an illusion. This had to happen.

Josh Bernoff, a digital media analyst at Forrester Research concurs saying, "It's not surprising at all. A revenue-less YouTube wasn't going to last."

When we heard Chad Hurley talking about this in January, we knew it was coming.

Now the practical problem related to this will be having controls in place where video that is uploaded is connected to the true content owner who has the rights to it. It looks like Google will be releasing a soltution to that very soon.