I know about Mary Meeker’s numbers, and that’s not even what I based this post upon; I further saw the original post at Silicon Alley Insider about how off that was.

I think that estimates are just that — estimates. One of the things that we will never know is what percenage, for example, of videos will show ads. 1%? How about 5%? or 10%? That just multiplies things by 10. How about the CPM? $20 seems a bit steep, but who knows what kind of graduated pricing scheme might take place? Could anyone ever have predicted, for example, Adwords buys that are up to $50 – $100 per *click*?

My take on things is that the reality will be somewhere in the middle, but the estimates that were discussed early this week — depending on how they work out for advertisers (important caveat) — will probably be on the conservative side.

Don’t neglect to remember the $1.65 billion capital expenditure Google incurred to acquire YouTube. I imagine a LOT of advertisement units must be sold on the site to break even on that investment. I seriously wonder the amount of time in years it will take to reach the break-even point?

- Brandon M.