Online video needs a business model. So does most of new media. So Google’s attempt to bring advertising to select YouTube clips, unveiled today, is just another step in that direction.

And you know what? The ads are not that bad, all things considered.

After months of testing various video advertising formats, Google settled on an approach that it hopes is less obtrusive to viewers and keeps them in control of what they’re watching. It’s similar to the “ticker ad” concept that VideoEgg introduced nearly a year ago, or the ads that appear along the bottom of the screen during television shows.

Adobe today announced the latest version of its near ubiquitous Web video software, Adobe Flash Player 9, which includes improved image quality through support for the industry standard H.264 codec.

Our sister blog, Read/WriteWeb, reports:

It’s codenamed Moviestar, because it includes H.264 standard video support, which is the same standard deployed in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD high definition video players. In other words, the quality of video has been substantially improved from the previous version of Flash Player 9. Also added to the mix is High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio support and “hardware accelerated, multi-core enhanced full screen video playback”.

Adobe claims that these advancements will extend their leadership position in web video “by enabling the delivery of HD television quality and premium audio content”.

A few months ago a columnist for the blog Reel Pop noticed three of the newest comedy shows on television all had their origin online or use the Web as a gimmick. VH1’s “Acceptable TV,” MTV’s “Human Giant,” and FUSE’s “The Whitest Kids U Know” are all web-to-TV success stories.

The New York Times noticed a similar phenomenon the other day at the Just For Laughs comedy festival in Montreal, where the hottest topic of discussion was sketch comedy and the Internet, not who is scoring the best TV deal.

The planned protests against the BBC, which we reported on a few weeks back, took place today as supporters of the Free Software Foundation (FSC) — dressed in bright yellow Hazmat suits — gathered outside BBC Television Center in London and BBC headquarters in Manchester to demand that DRM be eliminated from the BBC’s iPlayer.

The FSC is accusing the BBC of “corruption” because of the iPlayer’s reliance on Microsoft’s technology and the fact that, prior to joining the public service broadcaster, the controller of the BBC’s Future Media and Technology Group worked for Microsoft as director of its Windows Digital Media division.

A story doing the rounds in a number of UK newspapers and blogs (Independent, Financial Times, The Mail on Sunday) is that ISPs are increasingly worried about the BBC’s iPlayer, which, were it to catch on, could place an unacceptable strain on their networks. The solution, says Tiscali chief executive, Mary Turner, is for the BBC to contribute to bandwidth costs. While other ISPs are talking about implementing ‘packet shaping’ as a way of penalizing iPlayer traffic so as to maintain speeds across the rest of the network. The result would be that, during peak times at least, the iPlayer could become painfully slow.

With Google’s decision to abandon paid-for video downloads — announced last Friday — the company also inadvertently delivered a “Sesame Street-style” lesson in why DRM is evil (notice the irony?). In an email sent out to Google Video customers, the company revealed that, as of August 15th, purchased videos will no longer playback, and instead users are being a given refund in the form of a Google Checkout “bonus”.

One of the inherit problems with DRM is that if a company goes bust or, presumably in Google’s case, decides to shut down the servers it uses to verify a legitimate purchase, then any DRM’d media is rendered useless.

You might be wondering how Google can get away with it, and I’ve been asking myself the same question. Two answers spring to mind. Firstly, the customer-base of Google Video paid-for downloads must be so small that the company doesn’t expect much of a backlash, which in-turn it hopes to have tempered through its offer of Google Checkout vouchers. Secondly, and more worryingly, it’s likely that the terms and conditions of Google Video already protected the company against such a scenario — where customers don’t actually “own” the media they pay for but instead license it in some way that allows for any future changes in service — including a DRM server blackout.

Whether or not this is legal — and I’m no lawyer — it’s a blatant abuse of trust, for which Google deserves to be held account.

(Also see Cory Doctorow’s take).