By Owen Thomas, 5:20 PM on Thu Oct 2 2008, 533 views (Edit, to draft, Top, Slurp)

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So-called "postroll" ads — commercial clips which play automatically at the end of a video — are coming to YouTube, NewTeeVee reports. It's an embarrassment for Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who had insisted users hate postroll ads and predicted YouTube would find a new, more effective ad format. The postrolls, while they may make ads on YouTube more desirable, don't solve YouTube's real problem: The vast majority of its videos aren't suitable for carrying ads, because of their content or uncertain copyright status. As a result, YouTube has a far smaller share of online-video revenue than it does of online-video traffic.