If you’ve been on YouTube lately (and we’re sure you have, probably right before you came to the Branding Ideas blog!), you’ve undoubtedly noticed a pop-up advertisement appear on the bottom of the viral video you watched. Google, which bought YouTube in 2006 for a whopping $1.65 billion, is attempting to monetize its user-uploaded content, even offering a cut of the profits to uploaders. Yesterday, YouTube Product Manager Shenaz Zack announced on the YouTube Biz Blog that the video site is “extending the YouTube Partnership Program to include individual popular videos.” Cutting costs and boosting revenue is never easy (just ask the U.S. government), but Google is giving it the old college try and getting its users in on the action. It’s part of a gradual but imminent trend in which the You in YouTube is indeed “You,” partnering with billion-dollar corporations to boost everyone’s bottom line. Whether it’s a long-term strategy that will help YouTube become a profitable enterprise remains to be seen, but it should be fun to watch them try!