YouTube Founders Unfazed by Challenges

The ads only will be shown if a viewer chooses to watch them, Hurley said. Rolling out the new system becomes "a little more complicated with DoubleClick in the mix, to be honest with you. We want to roll out with an ad strategy that is going to be effective and unified with Google's plans."

On the copyright front, YouTube is working with Los Gatos-based Audible Magic Corp. to flag unauthorized music posted on site, Chen said. Developing a "digital fingerprinting" technology to track video copyrights is proving to be more vexing simply because it has never been done very effectively before.

"There are companies putting out press releases after they meet with us about their copyright tools and what they are doing," Hurley said. "But basically they're just learning about what we are doing. We don't feel the need to put a press release out there because we are actually working on it and building these tools."

Once the new copyright tools are finished, Hurley believes more media will view YouTube as friend rather than foe.

"We are working with media companies not only to create new models, but help them stay relevant (and) get in front of this new audience that is spending time in different places," he said.