Guess what movie BoomTown is being force-marched to this weekend by the Swisher boys?

Not just “Gnomeo & Juliet,” but the debut of the Justin Bieber movie hagiography “Never Say Never” in 3-D is much on the list I was presented without any ability to negotiate terms.

Now I’m a BeLieber.

Oddly enough, I am looking forward to it, because it’s looks charming and has gotten some pretty good reviews. Also, there is the hair.

Enjoy one of the trailers–this one has gotten close to 150 million views on YouTube:

Again, be wary of reading too much into any stock’s performance on any given day. But it seems safe to draw at least one conclusion: Investors aren’t freaked out about Demand’s symbiosis with/dependence on Google. Even after a puzzling blog post from the search giant last week.

The post, written by Google engineer Matt Cutts, defended the search engine’s performance against a chorus of criticism. But it acknowledged that Google was paying attention to complaints about “content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content” clogging its search results.

Lots of people logically assumed that Google/Cutts was talking about Demand, although the post never mentioned the company by name. And if Google, which supplies 28 percent of Demand’s revenue and a big slug of its traffic, has a problem with Demand…

But Demand CEO Richard Rosenblatt insists that Cutts wasn’t talking about his company at all. In fact, he says, Demand and Google are getting along just great, in a relationship that pays out real dividends for both parties. It looks like investors believe him.

I chatted with Rosenblatt about the Google post, and the companies’ relationship, yesterday at Demand’s New York outpost. Here’s an excerpt from our conversation:

Peter Kafka: Do you think that Google post was directed at you in any way?

Richard Rosenblatt: It’s not directed at us in any way.

Did you talk to them about that?

I can’t comment on that.

Okay. But they wrote this post, which talks about content farms, and even though you say they weren’t talking about you, it left a lot of people scratching their heads.

Let’s just say that we know what they’re trying to do. Last year, they put out three major changes. They put out Mayday–that was going specifically after spammers and low-quality content. Our traffic increased when they did that. The reason why is our content is being scraped and stolen, [because we're] the largest content producer. So they’re looking for original, non-duplicated, human-made content. That’s all our content. So if they were targeting us, you’d also see Wikipedia, About.com, Wikihow, every person that makes more than a few dozen articles….Our traffic went up.

Second one: They did something called Caffeine, to increase the [search] index. Our traffic went up.

They then did Google Instant. Our traffic went up.

So the three things [Cutts] talks about in his blog post did not adversely affect us. You can draw your own conclusions.

The post talks about going after spammers and content farms. But when you guys think of content farms, you don’t think that means Demand, right? You’re thinking of people who take my copy or your copy, and cut and paste it, and tweak it enough to fool Google.

He’s talking about duplicate, non-original content. Every single piece of ours is original. Written by somebody. And I understand how that could confuse some people, because of that stupid “content farm” label, which we got tagged with. I don’t know who ever invented it, and who tagged us with it, but that’s not us…We keep getting tagged with “content farm”. [Ahem.] It’s just insulting to our writers. We don’t want our writers to feel like they’re part of a “content farm.”

So can you sum up your relationship with Google today?

This is why our partnership with Google makes sense. 1) We help them fill the gaps in their index, where they don’t have quality content. 2) We’re the largest supplier of all video to YouTube, over two billion views and 3) we’re a large AdSense partner. So our relationship is synergistic, and it’s a great partnership. And it’s a partnership that we’re excited to continue to expand.

But pressed to talk about some of the company’s non-search businesses, Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette did allow that YouTube’s revenues “more than doubled” last year.

That’s good to know! But also not a shock. Last quarter, when the company offered up a smattering of numbers to appease inquiring minds, it told us it had doubled the number of video views it was monetizing, to two billion a week.

So the real surprise would have been if YouTube revenues hadn’t doubled in the last year.

Meanwhile, trying to figure out the true size, and value, of YouTube remains a guessing game for the best-intentioned observers.

Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney, for instance, thinks YouTube’s gross revenue is on a $1 billion run rate, but figures that number could grow by as much as 50 percent this year. Barclays’ Doug Anmuth, though, offers up a slightly more modest estimate of $1 billion + for 2011.

Profits? Who knows.

One pretty safe guess: Google won’t be giving us real YouTube numbers we can chew on for quite some time.

Cheezburger was founded in 2007 by Ben Huh, who raised $2.25 million from angel investors at the time to buy the blog “I Can Has Cheezburger.” Huh has run the company as a lean, profitable operation since then, with 50 employees based in Seattle.

“This is a company that’s borne of no one’s expectations, and we’re totally fine with that,” Huh said in an interview Monday, admitting that, yes, “it’s a cat-picture Web site.”

Huh said Cheezburger had fended off multiple funding offers throughout the years, but finally decided to call back some VCs this fall. “If you’re going to do something, you might as well do it well,” he explained.

Today the ad-supported Cheezburger network of humor sites has 375 million page views and 110 million video views per month, with its 16.5 million visitors uploading 500,000 pictures and videos.

“We’re not here to flip,” said Huh, explaining that the company will use its $30 million to ensure it creates a long-term viable business. He said Cheezburger would open up 18 new job listings Tuesday alongside the funding announcement. Huh said his goal is to build “the Disney of the 21st century.”

Image via I Can Has Cheezburger user jasmine.

One particular highly accessible kind of flash mob, in which local singing groups perform Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus at shopping malls, has been replicated all over the U.S. and Canada in the last month or so.

Quickly: Flash mobs are traditionally secretly orchestrated performances that play out in public places while bringing a little bit of magic to unsuspecting people in the right place at the right time. If you’ve ever seen those videos of a person breaking into song or dance in a public place, then being joined by hordes of interlopers who somehow know the full routine, you’ve seen a flash mob. (There are also less choreographed variations, like public pillow fights.)

Since flash mobs seem so fun, organic and full of life, they’ve of course been co-opted by marketers who mimic the style right down to camera shots of the surprised and confused onlookers capturing videos of the moment with their own camera phones. But they’ve also recently been adopted by wholesome community groups wanting to spread a little holiday joy. And in many cases, both the performers and the audience know about the event in advance (element of surprise be damned).

One flash mob performance of “Hallelujah” in a Canadian shopping mall, posted on YouTube on Nov. 17, has been seen more than 25 million times. YouTube’s Trends blog recently called it “by far, the most popular video of the season.”

YouTube’s Kevin Allocca also highlighted some 20 other flash mob performances, also of “Hallelujah” and mostly in shopping malls, from Orlando, Cleveland, Chattanooga, Juneau and Winnipeg. Allocca says the meme may actually have been kicked off by the Opera Company of Philadelphia performing “Hallelujah” in a Macy’s as part of the Knight Foundation’s Random Acts of Culture. That video was posted Nov. 1 and has more than six million views.

It’s gotten so bad that on Monday night a mall near Sacramento had to be evacuated after crowds overwhelmed it and the fire department feared for its structural integrity. A planned flash mob by the Sacramento Choral Society and Orchestra and other local congregations had been endorsed by the mall and promoted for weeks, drawing thousands to watch and sing along with their printed-out sheet music.

Would-be flash mobbers broke into impromptu singalongs as they were escorted out of the building and into the parking lot (with their video cameras recording all the while, of course). So apparently spontaneity isn’t dead yet.

The money, doled out via 500 $1,000 credits to photography mecca B&H Photo, is meant to reward some of YouTube’s most popular content providers. And it’s supposed to remind people how fruitful it can be to provide YouTube with good content.

Google’s video site usually does that by other means. For instance, it is happy to point out that members of its “Partner” program can now make real money–in some cases, a full-time living or even more–by supplying YouTube with popular clips.

But YouTube’s most public embrace of its partners will happen if the video site ends up acquiring Next New Networks, a Web video producer/distributor dedicated to putting out low-cost, high-view videos, like the ones featuring Obama Girl or the Bed Intruder. That is, exactly the kind of videos that YouTube is rewarding with today’s handouts.

News of the sale talks were first reported in the New York Times last week. And at the time, I’d assumed that YouTube was going to be able to buy Next New at a bargain basement price, in large part because the start-up is on its third CEO in three years.

But people familiar with the company tell me that if it does sell to Google, investors who have put in $26 million will get at least a decent return on their investment. So we’re looking at something in the $50 million range at a minimum, perhaps much more.

YouTube is Next New Networks’ primary distribution partner, which makes the proposed deal a bit of a head-scratcher for some: Why pay for stuff you’re already getting?

But YouTube apparently thinks it is worth its while to lock in that content pipeline. And it’s willing to spend a whole lot more than $500,000 to get it done.

Here’s one of the YouTube partners getting $1,000 worth of new equipment: “MysteryGuitarMan,” in a clip he put out last month that has since garnered almost 1.5 million views.

So here’s a new one: Same cool stunts (to my eyes, at least). More exotic locations. And it looks like it will be a hit, too. Helped by a push from Boing Boing, it’s gathered more than two million views in the last week.

And, as Ad Age’s Michael Learmonth points out, it’s also an ad, paid for by Red Bull.

That won’t be entirely clear to most viewers, since the words “Red Bull” don’t show up until the end of the seven-minute-plus clip. And also because the folks at Google’s YouTube have plastered the video with overlay ads for products that are not Red Bull’s.

But the Red Bull people are apparently okay with that, since letting Google run an ad on your video is an opt-in decision.

Here are the three data points that the search giant showed off during its earnings call this afternoon. All of them “begin with the letter B,” as product SVP Google Jonathan Rosenberg noted, and all of them come with caveats:

• $2.5 billion: Non-text display ad revenue run rate. That number includes ads from its DoubleClick unit as well as YouTube.
• 2 billion: YouTube monetized views per week.
• $1 billion: Mobile annualized revenue run rate.

All of those seem big–and they are! But they’re also deliberately fuzzy enough that it’s hard to tell exactly what they mean.

For instance: As Henry Blodget notes, those display-ad dollars are gross revenue, which means that Google only keeps a portion of them. And while that two billion YouTube views number is up from a billion a year ago, it’s proportionally the same: A year ago YouTube said it was monetizing a billion views a week while serving up a billion views a day; now the video site says two billion views a week and two billion a day.

Meanwhile Google officials, who routinely announce that YouTube is close to profitability, refused to tell analysts whether YouTube is actually profitable.

No matter! The point of b-as-in-big numbers was to impress Wall Street with Google’s ability to create new revenue streams beyond its core search ads. And the data, along with the company’s impressive Q3 performance, seems to have worked: Shares are up nine percent in after-hours trading.

——————

EARLIER

There’s the beat Wall Street was looking for. Google reports earnings of $7.67 a share and net revenues of $5.48 billion. The consensus was for $6.67 and $5.25 billion. GAAP EPS was $6.72.

Google (GOOG) has been plowing money into capital expenditures and people–it now has 23,300 employees, up from 21,800  months ago, a 6.8 percent increase–but it has been able to keep operating income quite healthy, anyway. Adjusted operating income was $2.93 billion, well above the $2.77 billion consensus.

GOOG is up considerably, now seven percent, in after-hours trading. Robot cars for all!

You can listen to (and watch) Google’s 4:30 pm ET earnings call by clicking on this YouTube link. I’ll add updates from the earnings call occasionally starting here:

As in recent quarters, CEO Eric Schmidt is sitting this one out.

CFO Patrick Pichette starts off. Aha! Teases that “we may have” Schmidt available for the first 30 minutes of Q&A before he gets on a GooglePlane.

300 of those new 1,500 employees came from acquisitions.

Discussion of “long-term” growth–”the next 5 to 10 years.” “Simply put, we’re on this growth agenda at full throttle…investing heavily in people and in product.”

There’s a “war for talent” in our industry, which is “out of synch” with the broader economy. Currently exploring how to attract and retain people. Winners and losers determined by this battle.

Re: Product investment, which you’ll hear about from product SVP Jonathan Rosenberg. He’s going to tell you about some numbers, but don’t expect to hear an update on these–they’re merely “proof points” about Google’s success.

Here’s Rosenberg, teasing new previously unreleased numbers.

Here they come. Starting with search and Google Instant:

Impact has been “very minimal” on revenue and “quite expensive” from a resource perspective.

But! “We launched it because we could.”

As search gets better, ads have to keep pace. Great momentum with AdWords.

New ad formats appear on more than 10 percent of query. Some formats show clickthrough rates as much as 10 percent on some, up 30 percent in others.

Big numbers, “which all begin with the letter B.”

$2.5 billion: Non-text display ad revenue run rate. That includes DoubleClick, YouTube.

2 billion: YouTube monetized views per week

$1 billion: Mobile annualized run rate

Mobile search queries up 5 times in the last few years.

Back to Pichette, to tamp down numbers.

In some cases, there is overlap with numbers. For instance, with AdMob, numbers counted in both display and mobile.

Time for Q&A, Schmidt is now on the line.

Schmidt says query growth is pushing click growth, and so are new ad formats. Ads are more compelling, etc.

Pichette notes that AdX numbers are included in the $2.5B display total.

Q: Please talk about YouTube. Of the two billion monetized views, what percent is that of total views? And are you profitable yet?

Pichette: Re: Profitability, “We have not made any comments on it.” [Except of course when they do, over and over.]

Rosenberg: Note that we’ve said we do two billion views per day–that will give you context.

Sorry, missed a Q.

Schmidt says growth of Android is “well past what I had ever hoped for.”

90,000 apps on Android “and growing very fast.”

Question about “proprietary benefits” of Android.

Schmidt: Android is the “largest single platform play” in mobile today.

We’re growing it by giving software away. How does that help us? Well, for starters, people who use Android search two times more than anyone else. Obvious benefit for us there, and search is more lucrative for us there as well, and that makes Android “hugely profitable.”

And we can add other value-added services to Android, but that’s not the focus right now.

Questions on cost: Cost per employee has declined. Can you continue that? And on mobile, will you stay with the “indirect monetization” Android strategy?

Pichette: Wouldn’t read anything into the cost-per-employee numbers. But we’re continuing to be frugal and generous.

Ad boss Nikesh Arora: We’re excited about the revenue model we have. We have no reason to change the model we have with Android.

Schmidt: And display will become a very big component of mobile.

Q: On display, can you break out YouTube and AdX numbers? And what do you think of competitive Android marketplaces?

Pichette: No breakout of numbers. [Duh.]

Schmidt: Goal of the app store is to make money for developers. Not a revenue goal for Google. More stores are a “win for everybody.”

Question about CPC on mobile devices. Rosenberg: They’re lower than desktop, because there aren’t many practical ways to consumate transaction. But on the iPad, activity looks a little bit more like it does on a PC, because there’s more room to enter credit card numbers, etc.

Q: Please discuss cannibalization between smartphone and PC–are iPad and tablet searches incremental or cannibalization? And can you give us color on international 26 percent growth?

Rosenberg: We don’t see cannibalization. We see mobile as complimentary to desktop. Different use patterns–mobile search is on weekends, during lunchtime, etc.

Arora: Generally, trend positive across the board. U.K. a bit weaker, but some of that is FX. Southern Europe way better than Northern. Asian markets robust.

Q: Competitors make $300 profit per handset sold over the lifetime of a device.You’re approaching this with a different model, but do you think that’s an upper limit on that number?

Schmidt: Our model is that handset makers and manufacturers make a lot of money from the phone, and we make money from advertising. So can’t compare the two, and premature for us to guess what we can do. “It should be highly lucrative” and a “very very strong revenue stream compared to a PC.”

Q: On social search. How do you “capture the signal” without access to the data feeds, as you have with Twitter.

Schmidt: “There are some ways we can do that” now, and we’re working on new ways.

Sorry, stepped out. Back now.

Q: TAC rate seems to be lowest since IPO. Sustainable? Growth has been driven by volume, not price. Sustainable, and/or will pricing increase going forward?

Pichette: MySpace deal is now over. That saved us a bunch of money. And mix of our partners will effect our TAC. That’s about it.

Rosenberg: Can’t answer volume/price question without “being forward-looking.” [Heh]

Q: Microsoft/Facebook deal was exclusive. But do you think you’ll see exclusive data deals? And what about Groupon, etc.? Can you compete there?

A: Value of exclusive data is “swamped” by “vastness” of the Web. So no concern there.

Schmidt: Always a concern that large chunks of data are not accessible to search engines….long pause… up to the content owner to decide how much to expose. We believe the world is better off if more information is searchable. “We fundamentally believe that.”

Rosenberg: Daily deals are very exciting. “A lot of small companies doing a fabulous job there.” We participate a little bit via sitelinks. But no question “that’s a very exciting and hot space.”

Q: When will Google Instant be on the BlackBerry or iPhone? What’s Android activation rate? And why not let advertisers bid directly on mobile inventory?

Rosenberg: Instant availability on other platforms “relatively soon”–probably this fall.

Not updating Android activation numbers.

Q: Given that non-core search is more material, do you think you’ll keep allocating resources with your 70-10-10 model? And when do you anticipate mobile overtaking desktop?

Schmidt: On mobile vs. display: Even if we knew I don’t think we’d talk about it.

On core vs. emergent: We talk about this all the time. Depends. Android is very small, and growing fast, so they get all the resources they need. We end up still at 70-10-10, but that’s not really a formula for us.

Pichette: What really matters the most to us is as Eric says, “When you see a hockey stick, pour gasoline on that fire.”

Q: Big-picture data question: What does Google think about leveraging user data to better target ads (see Facebook, Yahoo, etc.)–particularly with search data and display?

Schmidt: “We have a pretty strong opinion that we’re not going to do very much of it.” We’re intensely serious about privacy.

So “we’re not going to do the kinds of things that we could do with it… without your explicit permission. And in many cases we probably won’t do it forever.”

A question on display, which I’ve missed but will have to return to.

Pichette wraps things up. Today’s data points “are not about giving you information” for coming quarters, but to give you confidence that we’re building long-term businesses.

Call ends.

Mark Mahaney’s cheat sheet will help you decipher the numbers:

Does that sound familiar? It should: YouTube has always been at the top of comScore’s (SCOR) tallies. And since last November, Hulu’s U.S. video views have bounced around in the same zone, somewhere between 900 million and a billion views a month.

In other words, Hulu’s growth curve appears to be flattening.

Should Hulu be concerned? Not necessarily. The company–a joint venture between News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, Disney’s (DIS) ABC and GE’s (GE) NBC–says it is now turning a profit, which few (if any) competitors can say. And it says it’s on a pace to double revenue in 2010 from the $100 million it generated last year.

Still, it looks as if Hulu’s most recent growth spurt came last fall, when it added ABC’s primetime shows to its lineup. Unless the company has a very big partnership announcement up its sleeve, it won’t have a new slug of inventory to show off next fall.

CEO Jason Kilar and company have plenty of other issues to deal with. Like: How to launch that subscription service at a price that makes sense, with shows that people want to pay for and that its network partners feel comfortable putting online.

So maybe this isn’t a huge priority. But a flat growth curve can’t be fun to look at, no matter how well the site is working.

Funny you should ask. Nike will formally start pushing out its new ads tomorrow on TV, Facebook and Google’s (GOOG) YouTube. But the marketer gave the campaign a small push early this week, which is all it took. People are lapping this stuff up.

This three-minute spot, for instance, is on an “unlisted” YouTube page, which means it’s theoretically “private”–it won’t show up in YouTube search results or its homepage, and you can only get to it via a link (I got there via AdWeek’s Brian Morrissey). But it has already racked up some 400,000 views. That number will start getting really, really big tomorrow.

No idea who any of these people are? No worries. There’s a partial explication, via Nike press release, below.

The story starts when the viewer is drawn into the heat of battle on the pitch as a ball drops from the air into the path of Didier Drogba. As the world holds its collective breath, Drogba picks his way through sliding defenders and expertly chips the goalkeeper – wild celebrations commence across Africa. But they are curtailed at the last second as Fabio Cannavaro makes a stunning overhead goal line clearance. This game-changing moment propels Cannavaro to pop culture icon complete with television chat show appearances and a song dedicated to his moment of brilliance.

Other global football stars including Wayne Rooney experience how a moment on the pitch can last forever. In one scene, the England striker sees an intercepted pass picked up by midfielder Franck Ribery. The ensuing impact brings a nation to its knees and leaves us to imagine Rooney’s destroyed career and his life as a groundsman, living in a caravan, with Ribery’s image looming large above him on a giant billboard. Fast forward, and Rooney relives the moment, sprints after Ribery and wins the ball back. Personal and national pride restored, we see him receiving a knighthood, with headline-grabbing plaudits, a maternity room full of little Waynes and an effortless table-tennis defeat of Roger Federer. The Rooney ripple effect comes full circle.

Similarly, Cristiano Ronaldo is fouled in a game, and as he prepares to take a vital free-kick for Portugal, we flash forward to see the ripple effect if he scores; a stadium named in his honour and a Film Premiere for a movie of his life.

That’s a lot of videos! As usual, no word on financials, profitability, etc. But there is plenty of congratulatory back-slapping here and here.

Best part, by far: A brief anniversary message from Conan O’Brien, in which the comedian connects YouTube’s rise with America’s decline: “Nobody actually makes anything anymore. We’re all watching monkeys in propeller hats flush themselves down a toilet. And that’s why India is kicking our ass. And China, and pretty much everyone else. Switzerland, kicking our ass. Guam, way ahead of us.”

And he effectively sums up Web economics, or lack thereof:
“That’s not the point of the internet. It’s not to make money. It’s for someone you’ve never met, who’s a nerd, in Palo Alto, to make money.”

O’Brien also offers up his five favorite YouTube clips. Here are four of them. To see the fifth (something inscrutable and German) you’ll have to visit the site. If you’re time-pressed, definitely go with the cat.

Firefly’s ad unit is a mashup of lots of things we’ve seen in the past: A rich media banner ad with video that turns on if you roll the mouse over it and then takes over the whole page if you ask it to do so. If you do, you’ll watch a full video clip, followed by a survey, and get a chance to watch more clips, plus bonus goodies like maps, etc.

Easier for me just to show it to you:

FireFly is owned by Exponential, the Web ad company that owns the Tribal Fusion ad network, so the idea is that FireFly will leverage the network, which reaches about 120 million people in the U.S. FireFly will need to buy banner ad space on the network and charges advertisers only when Web surfers engage the ad.

Marc Barach, FireFly’s chief marketing officer, figures that his company will be buying space at costs that start at $3 for every thousand views and that he’ll get something like one percent of viewers to click on the ads. Which means he’ll have to charge advertisers the equivalent of a $6 to $10 cpm* for his company to make money.

So far, Barach has been able to convince marketers, including Hyundai, Nissan and Procter & Gamble (PG), to give him a shot.

And in case you’re wondering, you won’t be seeing these ads on Apple’s (AAPL) iPhones or iPads anytime soon: Like nearly everyone who sells video advertising, FireFly is using Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash, at least for now.

Here’s Barach’s take on the standards Holy War, via email:

“We are currently flash-based and for the immediate future are going to focus our efforts on tapping into the rapidly growing appetite for flash-based video on the web. However, there’s no reason why we can’t offer our functionality in html 5. Our intent is to stay close to our customers and when there is a desire to add iphones/ipads to the mix we’ll be right there with them.”

*An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the rates FireFly intends to charge advertisers.

More interesting is that the spinoffs, parodies, replies, etc., the ad has generated are now more popular than the original on Google’s (GOOG) YouTube and other sites.

So says Web video tracker Visible Measures, which estimates that more than half the seven million views the ad generated in the last week came from “derivative” sources.

The most popular “derivative,” according to Visible Measures: This one, which mashes up the also super-creepy “David After Dentist” audio with the original. This is where you shrug and say something like “takes all kinds.” Blech.

The first video, as best I can tell, has done around five million views over a few weeks, so that’s encouraging for the still-anonymous musician. Less encouraging is that this clip isn’t nearly so much fun as the first. I don’t know if that’s because Merton put all the best stuff in his first one or because we’re all used to the joke at this point. Maybe both.

There’s also a chance that the footage in this clip was recorded after Merton had already broken big. As he noted in an interview last week, he went back on Chatroulette after his first video was already a sensation and “my experience was very different because everyone knew who I was…it’s more fun one way, and a little less fun another way.”

As with the last one, there’s some swearing here, so view accordingly.

Ben Folds, meanwhile, has yet to release another Merton tribute. Probably on to something.

The important takeaway, which I’d basically deduced on my own: He’s definitely not Ben Folds.

Merton declines to identify himself for Mashable’s Brenna Ehrlich. Though I gather that once his identity is unmasked, it won’t be anyone you’ve ever heard of anyway.

Ehrlich’s Skype chat with Merton runs 15 minutes, and if you’ve got time, I suggest watching the whole thing, because it’s both fascinating and charming. It also rubs off just a bit of charm from the phenomenon, though. Because the truth is always a bit less fun than the story you cook up in your head.

If you’re time-pressed, here are my notes:

• Merton plays piano all the time, though it’s not clear if he’s a professional. He’s not in a band. He primarily does improvisational stuff in the “brooding, introspective” vein of Keith Jarrett and Tori Amos.
• He filmed the Chatroulette videos over two nights, in three-hour sessions. He and his pals edited the footage to three five-minute clips.
• He put the clips up on YouTube as a lark and initially kept them private. Now they’re approaching five million views, but he says that wasn’t his intent. “i didn’t give it some huge web site like College Humor… i guess that’s why they call it viral.”
• He did a new session a few days ago, and not surprisingly “my experience was very different because everyone knew who I was…it’s more fun one way, and a little less fun another way.”
• What about all the naked dudes Chatroulette is famous for?  “I’m not deeply creeped out by those people.” But he understands why other people might be. “I don’t think there should be any children on Chatroullete ever, for so many different reasons.”
• He loves Ben Folds’s tribute, of course. He also understands why casual observers might think the two men were the same person. “We’re both white guys who play the piano.”
• Putting the stuff up anonymously “wasn’t really a strategy,” but it was “empowering.” Merton knows this can’t last forever. “Eventually, someone’s going to find me out, and that’s fine…I’m pretty sure that I would have the most fun if i went undetected for as long as possible.”

Not addressed in the interview: How is Merton going to cash in on this? And why did Google (GOOG) force him to take down his clip yesterday?

I think I can answer the latter question. It seems that some of the Chatrouletters in the clip made privacy claims, and you can figure out which ones when you watch the re-edited video.

It has fixed its tech problems and is doing just fine, thank you very much. Vevo says it is generating around 20 million video views a day, which puts it on track to generate some 600 million views a month.

Some context: ComScore (SCOR) says that Hulu itself generates some 900,000 video views in the U.S, making it the second biggest video site after YouTube. And Viacom (VIA), the current No. 3, generates 500,000 views.

If you want to compare apples to apples, though, you have to cut Vevo’s 600 million down to 300 million since about half its views come from outside the U.S. Still, that’s enough to qualify Vevo for eighth place in comScore’s rankings, placing it above AOL (AOL) and CBS (CBS).

And when comScore’s December video numbers are released at the end of this month, Vevo’s numbers will come in below 300 million since it didn’t launch until Dec. 9 and because comScore’s numbers are usually lower than any site’s internal numbers.

Still, that’s a lot of eyeballs, and it’s more than the joint venture between Sony (SNE), Vivendi’s Universal Music Group and Abu Dhabi Media Company expected. But the fact that Vevo began with a huge audience, rocky start and all, shouldn’t be a surprise.

In fact, I said so last month. No need to type it twice:

While everyone has rightly been flocking to Vevo.com itself for a look-see, it’s not the most important Web site for the joint venture. That would be YouTube, where most Vevo users are actually going to encounter–and watch–Vevo videos, without even knowing that they’re watching a Vevo video.

To be clear: When Google’s (GOOG) video site agreed to help Universal Music Group (and later Sony) launch a new hub for music videos, it didn’t mean it would be sending its users away from YouTube.

When you read about Vevo launching with 400 million video views in the first month, understand that the majority of those aren’t coming from the new site but from YouTubers who are watching music clips the same way they always do, on YouTube. But Vevo will get credit for those eyeballs and any ad dollars they generate.

That is: If you’re watching a Ke$ha video on YouTube, there’s a good chance you’re watching a Vevo video.

So. Next question. Can Vevo turn all those views into dollars?

We’ll see. CEO Rio Caraeff tells me his sales group continues to bring in high-profile advertisers–the latest, last week, was Procter & Gamble (PG)–and has been able to get between $25 and $30 for every 1,000 impressions. That’s a whole lot better than videos traditionally earned on YouTube, and as good as some TV shows.

But it’s relatively easy to announce that you’re selling your initial batch of inventory at a high rate. It’s much harder to sustain that over time. So it’s hard to read too much into those numbers just yet.

In the meantime, the site is going to get much bigger in the near future.

For one thing, it should start showing videos from EMI Music Group within a few weeks, which means that it will have clips from three of the four big music labels. Warner Music Group (WMG), the lone holdout, has its own deal with YouTube.

And in March, Vevo should start syndicating its clips to other big properties, starting with CBS and AOL, meaning it will have plenty more eyeballs to sell. The challenge will be proving that the JV’s thesis–music videos alone are attractive to advertisers–is worth the effort.

Meanwhile, here’s a primer on Ke$ha, whom I didn’t know about until the other day. She is apparently big with the kids these days.

Gawker’s Doree Shafrir explains this to the rest of us. And if you don’t like words, here’s the clip:

This year, says Barclays analyst Douglas Anmuth. He predicts that the video site will see revenue jump 55 percent, to $700 million, in 2010, and that it will “start contributing positively” to the Google’s earnings.

Why? Because YouTube is ginormous, of course. But also because the company has become more sophisticated about advertising. (Note that Google content guru David Eun said much the same thing when I talked to him last month, specifically citing the Google’s integration of DoubleClick).

Here’s the relevant part of Anmuth’s note:

Perhaps the main take-away for Google’s display business is that in 2010 we believe YouTube will start contributing positively to EPS. An improving advertising environment certainly helps, but with YouTube monetizing more than 1 billion video views every week, and with strong sell-out rates on its home-page from larger advertisers–we note 90% of the top 50 Ad Age have advertised on YouTube–we believe the site can profitably take share of the branded display & video market. We project YouTube to generate $700 million in revenue in 2010, up 55% Y/Y. Usage continues to grow. In November the total number of YouTube’s videos viewed grew 139% to 12.2 billion in November and unique visitors grew 32% Y/Y to 129 million. As a comparison, Hulu, the second most popular video site by videos viewed according to comScore, recording 923 million videos viewed.

Of course, the standard caveats that Google (GOOG) uses when people generate less flattering estimates for YouTube also apply here. It’s very difficult to get a handle on how many pages/views Google is selling and how much it gets for each one. It’s also tricky to guesstimate how much Google is spending to serve more than a billion video streams a day. So at best, this is an educated guess.

Still, it will be interesting to see if Google concurs with Anmuth. We’ll hear from Eric Schmidt et al in a week when the company reports fourth-quarter earnings.

But here’s where one of YouTube’s most interesting conventions comes in: The “response” video.

If you’re a cynic, you’d argue that creating a response video to a popular clip is just a crude attempt to piggyback your way to exposure. And sure enough, “David’s” clip has 26 responses, and most of them aren’t terribly interesting.

Except for this one, from the reliably funny guys behind Chad Vader. Which is why it has nearly nine million views of its own:

Bonus parody, which hasn’t actually been labeled a response, from the excellent people at the Upright Citizens Brigade (if you live in New York and haven’t been to one of its Sunday night Asssscat shows, you’re doing something wrong):

Also, it wouldn’t hurt if you got it on national TV. And if you got YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley to give you a shout-out on Twitter.

Still, this Jimmy Kimmel clip of a duet with Norah Jones has been on Google’s (GOOG) video site for five days now, and it has racked up a mere 57,468 views. Go figure. I like it, anyway: