But those ads only work if people click on them, and the performance can vary dramatically. Web video tracker TubeMogul evaluated the views generated by 10 different video ads, each of which ran on the home page for a day earlier this year. Check out the range:

OK. So what does that tell us?

Maybe that YouTube’s core demo — 58 percent of the site’s users fall in the 15-24 range, TubeMogul estimates — like ads with talking babies (who doesn’t?). And that they have very little interest in tax software or Italian cooking travelogues.  Or

Here’s the best performing ad in TubeMogul’s sample:

And the worst:

You can check out the other eight on your own time:

Cars.com
Sony Pictures
Pepsi
Southwest
Nationwide
Panasonic
Touchstone Pictures
TurboTax

And Twitter, of course, is designed for the ADD generation. But in a classic “two wrongs, one right” equation, it turns out that video watchers who’ve been directed to a clip via Twitter last an extra, extra, extra long time.

A full minute longer, says video platform Brightcove, which along with TubeMogul, just released a slug of information about music video consumption on the Web.

Which makes plenty of sense, if you think about it. A search result may get you something you think you want. But a recommendation from a Twitter pal means even more–if your pal likes it, and you like you pal, you’re more likely to invest more time.

By the same token, I’m guessing that some of you may spend more time on this 20-year-old (!) Beastie Boys clip, simply because I’ve embedded it. Enjoy!

beastie boys Shadrach

??????? | MySpace Video

Google (GOOG) continues to insist that it will start making money from its Web video site soon. But for now, YouTube’s finances are a black box. From the outside, though, we can see indications that the site is at least becoming more serious about getting more ad dollars out of more videos.

Take this new study from TubeMogul, the Web video-tracking service. It says that 44.7 percent of YouTube’s most viewed videos are professionally produced and/or products of YouTube’s “partner” program, meaning that YouTube has the ability to shove ads on them. That’s up from 36.3 percent six months ago.

Here’s the full breakdown:

And for comparison, here’s what that looked like six months ago:

These charts don’t break it out, but TubeMogul reports that 41.93 percent of the 100 most popular videos on YouTube on a given day actually carry some kind of advertising, up from 36.72 percent.

If you want to be glass-half-empty about it, you could argue that six out of 10 of YouTube’s most popular clips still don’t carry ads, which is a problem. But that would be grouchy of you! Progress is still progress.

No comment from YouTube. But I imagine that if executives there did have something to say, they’d argue that 1) outsiders like TubeMogul really don’t have a good grip on their metrics, and that 2) focusing on the top videos at the site is misleading, since the site has been working hard to monetize the mid- and long “tail” of its clips.

Of course, the best way to respond to this sort of educated guessing would be to open YouTube’s books. But I’m not holding my breath on that one.

Meanwhile, here’s an ad-free clip YouTube recommended that I watch:

Don’t get me wrong: Google’s (GOOG) video site still appears to be the only place to see Letterman’s jaw-dropping admission that he has had affairs with staffers on his show and that a CBS (CBS) employee attempted to extort him with that information.

Those clips aren’t supposed to be there, and CBS and YouTube keep taking them down, but people keep uploading them. Here’s one that appears to come from a Portuguese user, for instance.

But I had a hunch that the story, which involves a man who has been on late night TV longer than many YouTube users have been alive, might not resonate with the site’s core demo. And data from video-tracking service TubeMogul make me think that’s the case. Here’s the report I got from TubeMogul marketing director David Burch:

Pirated versions only racked up 130,624 views throughout the day, mostly because CBS didn’t post an official version of the clip and was issuing take-down orders (they had already removed five versions of the clip by the time we ran our first report this morning). By way of comparison, pirated clips of the UFC Kimbo Slice fight totaled 1,074,531 views in the past 24 hours.

Oddly, CBS News’ channel released four news videos about the story today, but youtube.com/cbs only had Letterman’s Madonna interview rather than the clip everyone actually wanted to see.

Never heard of Kimbo Slice before? Like Fred, he’s yet another YouTube sensation, albeit one who’s graduated to TV.

Want to see this in action? Go to YouTube and try to find a clip of the Kanye West/Taylor Swift/Beyoncé incident from Sunday night’s Video Music Awards. Everyone’s still talking about it (I don’t know why, really, but I guess I’m out of the demo), but if you want to watch it on YouTube, you’re stuck watching shaky, grainy footage created when people film their TV sets with a camcorder.

That’s the result of Viacom (VIA) and YouTube using the site’s Content ID system–which YouTube installed after Viacom filed suit more than two years ago. Content ID allows YouTube to track copyrighted material on the site as long as the copyright owner tells it what to look for.

It’s not a plug-and-play solution: On Sunday, Viacom had to have staff work through the night to provide YouTube with “reference files” from the live show so that the Google’s video service could find the offending clips and take them down.

But it worked pretty well. Decent-quality clips of the Kanye incident were taken down fairly quickly, and the grainy shots had only generated some 700,000 views by Monday afternoon, according to video-tracker TubeMogul. Meanwhile, MTV’s official version was approaching two million views (it’s now above three million).

You could argue that both Google and MTV would be better served if the official clip was on YouTube. And one day, that might happen. But first, they have to settle their court case.

That looks less likely today than it did a week ago, by the way, because of the recent ruling in the Universal Music/Veoh case. Team Viacom says the case, which appears to be quite similar to its own, won’t have any bearing on the how the company proceeds, while the YouTube guys see it as an affirmation of their position. Translation: More legal back and forth and fewer Viacom clips on the world’s biggest video site.

Here’s one of the low-fi versions, by the way. Not recommended if you’re prone to motion sickness:

This chart, from video-tracking service TubeMogul, doesn’t prove or disprove YouTube’s claim. But it does give you a good sense of where the “short tail” of YouTube’s videos–its most popular stuff–comes from.

To tease it out further, I asked the TubeMogul folks what percent of YouTube’s top videos actually had ads, of any sort, on them. The answer: All of the YouTube “partner/professional” clips–which makes sense. And then another 1.79 percent of the user-generated videos. In other words, 63.28 percent of YouTube’s top videos are entirely ad-free.

Better than the old days, when the site had no ads at all. But it might explain why even though Google (GOOG) is optimistic about YouTube’s chances, the search engine has “yet to realize significant revenue benefits,” as the company pointed out in its most recent quarterly filing.

Here’s a video from YouTube’s most popular offerings that remains unmonetized. Though it seems it would be no problem to get an insurance company to sign on for this one.

*Always good when you get to praise the boss’s idea in public. Even better when you mean it, as in this case.

So says video-tracking service TubeMogul, which reports that Twitter users who click on a referral link to a Web video are likely to stay longer than people who get to the video from Facebook or Digg. Tubemogul has a handy chart to make its case here:

Tubemogul thinks this is surprising data, but the results make perfect sense to me. Digg users race in and out of Web pages with amazing speed, and the bigger Facebook gets, the less meaningful your “friends” list becomes, which means you’re more likely to be steered to something you really don’t care about.

But since you’re self-selecting the people you pay attention to on Twitter, their referrals should be more meaningful. This is where the Twitterati’s praise of the “passed link” as a new currency has some real meaning.

Tubemogul’s data come from a three-month survey of video links from the three services, totaling more than 6.7 billion video views. TubeMogul notes that it can’t say which services it tracks, but simple math makes it an awfully good bet that one of them is Google’s (GOOG) YouTube.

All-righty. Time to put Tubemogul’s data to the test. I just asked my Twitter pals to send me the best YouTube clip they’ve seen all day, and these are the first three responses I got (thanks @smalera, @laceyhaines and @derekbrookmeyer). See if they hold your attention (Warning! One of these is a clip of Kubrick’s adaptation of a Nabokov novel, and no one falls down, gets hit in the head or explodes at any point. Just so you know.)

That’s because ABC, which broadcast last night’s show, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which produces the event, don’t want clips of last night’s show on the world’s biggest video site. Instead, they’d prefer that you watch highlights on ABC’s Oscar.com site.

I understand the thinking. After all, Disney’s (DIS) ABC supposedly commands crazily high ad rates for Oscar.com. I’m told that last year, ABC could charge advertisers more than $70 for every thousand eyeballs that visited the site–at least double what other big media sites can command on the Web.

Still, you’d think that ABC, the Academy and Google’s (GOOG) video site could figure out a way to get visitors at least a taste of what happened last night via YouTube, and then eventually direct those eyeballs to the official site.

But if you look for “Oscar” on YouTube this morning, you’ll get a series of official ABC/Oscar-endorsed highlights from last year’s show at the top of the search results. And if you look deeper than that, you’ll find grainy, shaky footage from YouTube uploaders who recorded clips of last night’s show on camcorders.

That’s a Fail, as the Web folks like to say. YouTube users don’t get what they want, and ABC and the Academy don’t give them a compelling reason to come to the official site.

Then again, maybe YouTube users don’t really care about the Oscars that much–unless it gives them a chance to see one of their favorites stars walking or talking.  Video tracking service TubeMogul says that unofficial Oscar clips have generated  470,000 views on YouTube since last night–and that unofficial clips of “Twilight” star Robert Pattinson’s appearance on the show generated another 300,000 views.

Don’t know who Robert Pattinson is? I’m in the same boat. But he’s what the kids are into these days.

And here’s my favorite highlight from last night’s show, which I can’t find on either YouTube or Oscar.com: Seth Rogen and James Franco reprising their roles from last summer’s “Pineapple Express”; thanks to FirstShowing.net for this one.

To put that in context, TubeMogul normally tracks uploads by the hour: Last fall, when the “Saturday Night Live” Sarah Palin skits were the hottest thing on the Web, users were sending clips to the site at a rate of 9.5 per hour, says marketing director David Burch.

Yet another testament to Google’s (GOOG) reach, and to the powerful appeal Obama has to the Web generation. And, if we’re going to get technical about it, yet another example of how hard it is for the site to grapple with copyright issues–if copyright holders wanted to, they could probably require the site to take down the majority of these clips for copyright violations, since they’re being lifted from broadcasters’ and other news organizations’ streams. But I’m betting these clips stay up.

In any case, I can’t imagine there’s anyone out there who didn’t see the event live. So here’s a different take from a YouTube uploader, Achangein09, who contributed this clip a few minutes ago:

Confused? Don’t be. It’s a straightforward explanation: Web video watchers have even twitchier fingers than couch potatoes flipping through 500 channels. Which means that the longer any particular video runs, the less likely they are to watch the whole thing.

Common sense, really. But the folks at video-tracking service TubeMogul are now offering a statistical backstop: A study of how long the average Web video watcher stays with any given clip (click chart below to enlarge).

Answer: Less than one minute. Ten seconds into an average clip, more than 10 percent of viewers have moved on, TubeMogul says. And by 60 seconds, more than half of viewers have bailed out. Anything more than five minutes is heroic: More than 91 percent of viewers are gone by then.

That’s one of the reasons many Web video publishers and advertisers are sticking with “pre-roll” ads that run before any actual content shows up–even Google’s (GOOG) YouTube, which had previously disdained pre-rolls, is now contemplating using them in order to goose revenue. (And yes, this site uses them as well).

That’s a shame. In an ideal world, video sites would give people a good reason to keep watching a clip as soon as they hit play. And they would find a way to get an ad in front of viewers once they’re already engrossed.

Easier said than done, admittedly. But while Web video’s big brains go to work on this problem, let me invite you to stick all the way through the six-minute, 48-second clip below: Stevie Wonder singing “Superstition” on Sesame Street in 1973. If you get all the way through and aren’t satisfied, let me know. I’ll get you your money back.

That was fast.

The recent resurgence of "Saturday Night Live," spurred by Republican VP candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin and her comic doppelgänger, Tina Fey, may already be over.

How do I know? Well, there's the gut check--I watched most of Saturday's show, which didn't feature Palin or Fey, and it was a snoozer (the absence of new mom Amy Poehler probably didn't help either).

But we can also gauge the reaction of Internet users, thanks to the good folks at TubeMogul, a small start-up that specializes in tracking Web video views.

While SNL's sketches this season have become watercooler hits in both legal form (NBC.com, Hulu) and not-so legal form (YouTube), this weekend's show isn't making an impact, at least so far: TubeMogul says YouTube users are only trying to post SNL clips at the rate of about one per hour, since the show aired Saturday night.

That's down from an average of about six per hour for the other shows SNL has aired this season.

Could it be that NBC--owned by GE (GE)--is just doing an extra-zealous job of keeping illegal copies of its clips off of a video site owned by Google (GOOG)? Mmmmmmaybe.

But probably not: Last Thursday's SNL special, which featured not only Tina Fey, but also show veteran Will Ferrell as President George W. Bush, was a huge YouTube hit, generating 9.5 videos per hour and 1.85 million views in 24 hours.

Meanwhile NBC.com's own data confirm that this weekend's show fell flat: The site says the two political clips posted below have generated a mere 460,000 views since Saturday.

Compare that to Thursday's showstopper, currently at 1.5 million and counting.

I'd bet the remainder of our 401(k) that SNL's staff and cast are going to vote for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama next month.

But the bean counters behind the show are obviously rooting for the ticket of Sen. John McCain and Palin.