One-Off Viral Videos Now Can Make Money on YouTube

Business Week reports:

Ever since Google’s YouTube video sharing unit started trying to make some serious money in late 2007, it has mainly tried to place ads on videos produced by people who regularly create popular videos. (It doesn’t place ads on videos unless their creators specifically allow it.) Now that two-year-old YouTube Partner Program is being expanded to individual videos that suddenly become very popular—that go viral, as they say—whether it’s the African safari animal faceoff in “Battle at Kruger” (with 45 million views to date) or cutesy videos like “Otters holding hands.”