If it happens - - - and there are lots of indicators that say it will - the acquisition of YouTube by Google should be a good thing.

YouTube did a terrific job of connecting its platform to creators. Despite the cries that YouTube is fueled by copyright violators, the fact is that the top 20 videos are almost always home made and often very good. The only immediate issue is music, since lots of people use copyright music as part of their lip sync or montage videos. But YouTube is dealing with that, making deals and putting in place tech that should begin to detect songs. The real question is what does the music industry want to do, allow the use or shut it down. Really, they just want to get paid.

And sites want to get paid, and creators want to get paid. So does Google bring it's ad tech to video - and if so, does that open UGC to a whole new kind of revenue?

I'd say yes - it does.

Part of what gets lost is that the very nature of advertising is changing. And Television is the next frontier.

Think for a sec about Google and their revenues. Then go on google and type in Alaska Cruise, or Doc Martins, or discount laptop. You're not seeing SAAB, or Coke, or General Foods ads. You're seeing direct response, discounters, and such. You're seeing ads that would have been in the past found in the Yellow Pages. So leading national advertisers, the big brands of TV, aren't really there yet. And maybe they won't be. It hardly matters.

Because if you look at GPS, Google Maps, and the shift toward national discount and local service ads- video is likely to follow that trend. The ads that never really took off on cable (local retail, local services, and classifieds) are all likely to be the fuel that powers the video advertising trend on the web.

These are brand new customers, who've used local newspaper and radio to do the job in the past, but are going to be far more interested in a pay-per-click model for video on the web.

So that's the place where a marriage of Google and YouTube really sings.

Let's see what the next 24 hours brings.